


Seared With Scars

by babyblueavenger



Series: Mystery Nerds AU [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Also Ripley is cute again, Blood, Discussions of death, Mentions of Suicide, Mostly because there's a spoiler involved, Mystery Nerds AU, Nightmares, PTSD, Scars, Smoking, Swearing, Torture, Triggers will be tagged as they show up, Violence, Young Grunks, allusions to rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-25 00:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 57,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6172873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyblueavenger/pseuds/babyblueavenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We're all of us haunted and haunting."<br/>- Chuck Palahniuk, "Lullaby"</p><p>Ford can't seem to catch a break when it comes to reminders of those he's hurt. He tries to make amends in the only way he knows how, but soon gets himself, Stan, and Helen swept up in the dark secrets of Gravity Falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, I finally finished the first chapter of my new fic. I’m sure you’re all just leaping for joy.
> 
> I’m warning you, though, my mojo has been very off recently. This might take a lot longer to get finished, especially since I didn’t do what I did with Life Support, and write a bunch of it at once. I’m just plunking it out as it comes. I will try really hard to keep it flowing. All I ask is that you beautiful people stay patient.

“Think what devils chase a man who cannot sleep in his own home.”  
\- Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros

\-------------

The frigid air constricted around him, and he pulled the threadbare robe tighter around his thin body. He didn’t like the winter. It was a lonely time of the year, full of dead things and that slow, seeping chill. He preferred spring. Spring meant life. Spring meant green grass and new foals and warmth and Nana smiling because soon she’d be able to tend to her flower bed out by the wood shed again, because her knees wouldn’t bother her as much.

As he exhaled, the breath hanging in front of him in a billowy mist, he smiled. He remembered Nana today. That was good. 

Ivan fretted over his memory more and more these days. He would forget things without ever picking up the device, from what day it was to the names of his parents to his own age. 

Ivan thought the best thing for him to do was convalesce, relax and try to let his mind heal. He would remember what he was supposed to in time, Ivan said, but he mustn’t strain himself. 

The good people of this town needed him, to help them forget their own troubles. He couldn’t do that if he could barely remember who he was. The world was too dark to be without the good work he and his followers did. 

But there were nights much like this one where he found he couldn’t rest, no matter how tired his poor bones were. He wished to sleep, but he could not sleep. There were nights he felt that, perhaps, he would never sleep again. 

He’d taken to sneaking outside the confines of the inner sanctum when he felt this way. Ivan clicked his tongue and shook his head, saying it wasn’t wise for him to venture outside. As fragile as he’d been since the memory problems began, he was liable to catch his death, exposing himself to the elements in such a way.

He found, though, that he couldn’t help himself. Being outside, inhaling the smell of the night and the surrounding forest, it put him at ease. It stirred his mind. For some reason, it made him remember. Not fully, mind, but in snippets. Forests and outside and the feeling of grass and the comforting isolation the trees provided - it all seemed so right to him. As if that was where he had come from, where he had always belonged.

More than once, Ivan had gone searching for him, only to find him propped up against the side of the building, curled in on himself like a small child, sound asleep for the first time in days. 

So now, even though the cold bit at the soft skin of his face, and needled in his lungs with every breath, there he sat, in the alley behind the museum. He sat, and he tried to remember. 

He focused on Nana. She seemed to take center stage in his harried mind tonight. What did he remember about her?

A hickory rocking chair.

Silver hair swept back in a French braid that she plaited herself every morning.

Two blue knitting needles clacking together.

Brown, horn-rimmed glasses perched low on a hawk-like nose.

Purple house shoes…no…they were pink…or did she wear house shoes at all? Were they perhaps fuzzy wool socks? 

And, as quickly as Nana had come, she slipped away, lost in the recesses of his addled brain. Slipping away like water through his fingers.

He wanted to cry, long and hard like a lost child. Losing his grip on a memory always upset him, but this felt so much worse. 

He could feel a black stain of loneliness spreading deep in his chest. He’d only felt this way a few times before, when some memory floated around in his subconscious that just seemed…more important than the others.

A baby looking up at him with wide, curious eyes, gurgling with delight that it recognized him. 

A young man and woman laughing with him across a restaurant booth, sipping sodas and seeming so happy just to be with him

And now this Nana, stroking his hair and listening to him prattle about his books and his schoolwork and anything else that was on his mind. 

Like a bittersweet rainfall, the tears came, and he let them. He was too tired to stop them. He let his head fall back until it gently knocked against the brick wall he sat against. His limbs felt like rubber hoses, stretched to their limit. The black stain only spread farther.

He couldn’t stand this. He couldn’t take the not knowing. 

Ivan told him that what he was doing was a great service to the people in this town. It let them live their lives in peace.

He couldn’t imagine anyone being at peace this way.

And the worst part was, he didn’t even remember why he was doing this. 

Finally, in that cold, dark alleyway, he was overcome by that black stain on his heart. He buried his face in his knees, and cried, his quiet, tinny sobs swallowed up by the night.

\--------------------------

It was two in the morning, and Helen couldn’t sleep.

So, she did what she’d been doing to cure insomnia for the past two years - made herself a cup of tea and got out a jigsaw puzzle.

She opened the box and dumped the five hundred pieces out onto the dining room table, which she’d cleared of the lace runner her brother, Michael, had gotten her for a wedding present. It looked much less delicate and dainty all bunched in a pile at the far end of the table. It was going to get wrinkled that way, but she’d worry about that in the morning. 

She propped the lid of the box up the metal pitcher of fake sunflowers that acted as the centerpiece. She couldn’t wait until spring, so they could get some real flowers on the table. Something you could smell and see and touch and enjoy before they began to brown and wilt. Something fleeting, yes, but something real. 

The picture on the front of the box was a pastoral farm scene, with two horses in the foreground, and a cheerful red barn behind them. Beyond that, rolling hills and tall, green trees sprawled. The sky in the picture was nauseatingly blue, and the scarce clouds were fluffy and pillow-like. 

It was so damn pleasant it was almost irritating. 

Helen began to turn up all the pieces, revealing bits of color and parts of horse anatomy. She separated the edge pieces in their own special pile, while the pieces to fill it in were places near the edge of the table, to be moved back when the frame had been completed.

This was her routine. This was the tedium that eventually lulled her to sleep. She took a sip of her tea and continued to sort.

She hadn’t had to do this for a while. At least six months, she’d venture to guess. She certainly didn’t do it as much as when the routine started. 

She supposed she started up again because the house was so quiet. Michael had invited them all to visit him for the long President’s Day weekend down in San Francisco. He’d urged Helen to come too. It would do her some good to get away from all the bleak winter weather, he’d said. They could go sailing and see the sights. They hadn’t been here since Daisy was a baby, after all.

But she didn’t feel right leaving the house right now. Not right now. 

Instead, she packed up the kids and told them to have a good time. Take lots of pictures. Bring her back a nice souvenir. She’d stay here and man the fort. She jokingly promised not to go through Daisy’s diary while she was gone. The memory made Helen snort a laugh. Even if Daisy did have a diary, Helen sure as hell didn’t know where it was. And she didn’t plan on going looking. Being fourteen was frustrating enough as it was without your mother poking into your privacy, as Helen had learned when she was fourteen many decades before. 

And so, Helen had kissed her three children goodbye and put them on a plane to San Francisco that afternoon. As soon as the kids were on the ground, less than two hours later, and were with Michael in his beachside condo, they called her up and excitedly told her she was missing the most spectacular view. She’d laughed and told them, once more, to just have a good time. Don’t even worry about her.

But as night had fallen, and the small town that surrounded her house grew quiet, Helen felt…out of sorts. She’d felt this sensation many other times in the last two years, and there was really no other way to describe it. It was like a mix of apprehension, loneliness, and indigestion. She knew there was no physical reason to feel this way. It was all her own mind, turning against her and making her head twinge in pain, her muscles tighten, and, worst of all, robbing her of a good night’s rest. 

She’d first discovered the jigsaw puzzle trick about two weeks after it all began. She’d been wrestling with the insomnia and the awful feelings that entire time, and felt like a fraying shoe string. Eventually, she’d come undone altogether, and there’d be no saving her. 

One night, while she was pacing the house, trying to force herself back to sleep, she’d seen the puzzle box. It belonged to Scott, a 250 piece one with G.I. Joe characters on it. It’d quickly been abandoned halfway through, let on the floor with barely one corner formed. She’d shoved the pieces back into the box, took them to the dining room table, and by the time she’d finished half of it, she was too exhausted to feel anything other than a desperate need to sleep. And she had, like a rock, like a drunk; beautiful, blessed sleep had finally come to her. 

From then on, any night she couldn’t sleep, she sat down to a puzzle. They gave her something to focus on, something mind-numbing and full of order. Something to lure her away from agitating thoughts. 

She did the G.I. Joe one at least six times, before Richard finally realized what she was doing. He came back from grocery shopping one day with three new puzzles of varying nature scenes for her one day, setting them out on the dining room table for her next sleepless night. That was about three days before he walked out. 

Word spread quickly among her family members. Every birthday, Christmas, and Mother’s Day since then, she’d received at least one puzzle as a present. She had to start keeping them in the hall closet, splitting the space evenly between the puzzles and their bulging winter coats. Many of them had never been opened, because she hadn’t done it for so long. Tonight was different. Tonight, her mind was under full assault from things she’d rather not think about. 

She turned over the last two pieces, revealing a swatch of red and a bit of tree trunk. She tossed them into their respective pile, then pushed it away. Swiping a hand through the edge pieces, she spread them out, searching intently for a fit.

She found one immediately, and the two pieces slid together to form parts of the edge of the skyline.

Her lungs expanded satisfyingly as she let out a contented sigh. 

\--------------------

Darkness flooded Ford’s vision as his eyes shot open, and he was grateful for it. Nothing was that horrible shade of yellow. All was quiet. There were no desperate screams or mad gibberish being whispered in his ear.

Everything was normal. It was only a dream. He was safe.

He sat up in his bed, willing his body to stop trembling so violently. His muscles were so tense that they ached with every tremor. His breath was coming out in ragged bursts, as if his lungs were seizing, shriveling up and dying. 

He squeezed his eyes shut again. He had to stop thinking that way. It would only make it worse.

And so, he waited. 

It felt like ages before the trembling stopped, even though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. 

He knew he needed to get back to sleep. For the last several days, he’d been down in the basement, working tirelessly to dismantle that godforsaken portal.

He didn’t care that it was his life’s work anymore. Not since these nightmares began. 

They’d started about a week ago, and simply enough. Mostly flashes of color and sound. Unnerving, but nothing too bad. As time passed, they got worse. The flashes of color morphed and gained shape, although what shapes they were meant to be he guess was beyond his mortal comprehension. The snippets of sound became full-on cacophonies, assailing him so that his body shook with each reverberation. Memories began to intermingle with these hideous shapes and sounds. 

The first time he ever shook Bill’s hand. _From now until the end of time…_

Fiddleford looking down at him in concern, after finding him on his back at the bottom of the stairs. At the time, he hadn’t remembered how he got there. Fiddleford had scolded him to be more careful, he could have broken his neck…

His palm bleeding profusely, a kitchen knife, streaked crimson, clattering to the floor as he lost his grip on it. That had happened the day after Ford shut the portal down…

The most prominent memories, though, were the ones from the day Fiddleford almost fell through the portal. His wide-staring eyes. Being completely non-responsive for several minutes. Speaking in total nonsense once he was responsive. His warning that the portal was dangerous and needed to be destroyed. 

Why hadn’t he listened?

Thanks to these nightmares, he’d found himself thinking about Fiddleford more and more. When he was in the basement, ripped off panels and disconnecting wires, he’d think how much easier this would be if he had his assistant. But then it would hit him, swift and strong like a punch to the stomach, that he was the reason Fiddleford was gone at all. If he was lucky, the guilt would only linger a moment, before he distracted himself with something else on the portal that needed to be done.

More than once, he had to stop working completely, because he’d be overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness that he couldn’t accurately explain. His brother was right upstairs, reading the stack of library books he’d obtained for the next two weeks. Ripley was asleep on his feet, keeping his toes so warm Stan joked about never needing to buy socks again. There was no reason to feel this way.

But thoughts like that only made the loneliness deepen, and linger with the feelings of guilt that had bubbled up alongside it, turning it into a dreadful cocktail that made him want to lay on the cold dirt floor and cry. 

That same feeling was coming to him now, starting as a tingling in the tips of his twelve fingers, before shooting up and out, spreading through him, before settling in his stomach like a rock. 

Ford sniffed a little. He was in no mood to deal with his own silly emotional breakdown.

When the feelings first started, he tried to remind himself that Fiddleford had probably just gone back to California, started back in that crazy personal computer project he’d babbled about sometimes. He was fine. Of course he was. 

One day, the mental reassurance hadn’t been enough. So Ford decided to prove it to himself. He’d fished Fiddleford’s home phone number out of his dusty, sparse rolodex and dialed. 

All he’d been met with was a robotic voice telling him the number had been disconnected. Please hang up and try again.

Ford had tried to tell himself that this didn’t mean anything. Fiddleford had just gone through a divorce. He probably moved, and had just forgotten to give Ford his new phone number. Any day now, he’d get a call or a letter from his friend, apologizing for not getting in contact sooner, but things have been plum crazy in his life, or some other colloquial, home-spun saying, like the ones Fiddleford always used without thinking about it.

He’d been telling himself that for almost a week now, and still no word from Fiddleford. 

Needless to say, he was starting to get concerned. 

Another tremor ran through him. Ford sighed. He obviously wasn’t going to get back to sleep any time soon. 

He leaned over and groped about for the switch to his lamp. Then he fumbled for his glasses.

From somewhere downstairs, he heard Ripley’s claws click cheerily across the floor, then the front door close. Stan must have let her out for a late night bathroom break. Stealing a glance at his bedside clock, he realized he needed to amend that to early morning bathroom break. It was almost four. 

He waited for Stan and Ripley’s footsteps to start heading back to his bedroom, but instead, they moved towards the opposite end of the house, towards the living room. Then, they suddenly stopped. Furrowing his brow, Ford threw back his covers, and got out of his bed, heading for the door. 

When he looked out into the hallway, he could see the light from a lamp in the living room was on, flooding the area with pearly light. Ford walked towards the stairs and began to descend. The entryway to the living room came into view, and he could see Ripley stretched out on the floor, lying on her side, her legs occasionally twitching as she dreamed her puppy dreams. 

Ford rounded the corner and stepped into the entryway, he was greeted by the sight of his brother, lounging on the second-hand couch they’d found a pawn shop. He was facing away from Ford, his head bent down, chin resting on his fist. 

Ford quietly said, “Stan?”

Stan started at the sound, and turned so quickly, that Ripley woke momentarily from her sleep, lazily turned her head to inspect the surrounding area, and then, finding nothing that particularly excited her, let her head fall back to the floor with a soft thump. 

“Sorry,” Ford mumbled. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Stan’s face softened as he turned a bit to face Ford better. “S’alright, Sixer,” he said. “Force of habit, I guess.” Ford could see a book in his brother’s hand, his thumb between the pages so he didn’t lose his place. That was something that had surprised Ford when Stan first moved in with him. Stan had never been much of a reader when they were children. The bookshelf in their bedroom mostly belong to Ford, and Stan would scoff about how books were boring and they already got him to do more reading than he ever wanted in school. Who would wanna read for fun?

But a few days after Stan had gotten a clean bill of health from Helen and could drive himself around again, he asked Ford if there was a library in Gravity Falls. As soon as Ford had given him directions, he’d hopped in the Stanleymobile, headed out, and come back with a new library card and a stack of four books. Ford had chanced a look at them, and even though he really wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, he didn’t expect to see things like Jack London, Richard Adams, Daphne Du Maurier, and a Stephen King that could have easily been used as a doorstopper. 

But Stan plowed through them all anyway. It amazed Ford. He hadn’t had a chance to ask Stan where this sudden bookishness had come from, but he was beginning to get curious. 

He was dragged out of his thoughts by Stan asking, “What are you doing up anyway?” 

Ford shook his head a little to clear it, hoping that didn’t seem to odd to Stan. He replied simply, “I just couldn’t sleep. I guess it’s kind of hard getting back on a normal sleep schedule when you’ve spent several months working into the night on a giant project.”

“Tell me about it,” Stan replied. He turned into a sitting positioning, reaching down and grabbing a bookmark next to him on the couch. He stuck it in the book and closed it, setting it aside. “Not that I’d know anything about giant nerd projects, but I do get the ‘sleep where you drop’ kinda thing.”

“That’s why you two are down here, I take it.”

“Yeah,” Stan replied, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “Guess I’m just not used to a full night’s sleep just yet.”

“At least you’ve got a way to distract yourself,” Ford said, walking over to the couch. He sat heavily on the opposite end from Stan, pulling up his legs and tucking them up next to him. “When I can’t sleep, I’m too anxious to do anything, let alone concentrate enough to read.”

“Maybe you just aren’t reading the right stuff,” Stan said. He picked up the book he’d set aside, another by Stephen King. This was considerably shorter than the last one Ford had seen him with. The cover was the color of old paper, with a man, a woman, and a little boy positioned in various spot on it. The central image was a large, white and blue building towering in the background. It seemed to be staring down at all of them. In large gray letters at the top of the cover was the title, “The Shining”.

“I’ve read this one twice already,” Stan said. “But until the library gets the latest one he put out last year, I don’t mind rereading.”

Ford studied the cover for a moment before he said, “Isn’t that the same guy who constantly has parent groups on his ass because his books are too scary?”

Stan gave a smirk. “Yep. He’s the guy.”

“And you consider this bedtime reading?”

“Sure do.”

“Have you ever considered this might be why you aren’t sleeping,” Ford asked jokingly.

Stan laughed and said, “Nah. It’s not that bad. Ain’t much worse than the bedtime stories Shermie use to tell us.”

Ford smiled and said, “Ah, yes, Shermie’s ‘bedtime stories’.” He made quotations marks in the air with his fingers, and Stan snorted out a laugh. “‘The Monster in the Hamper’. ‘The Boogyman and the Twins’. Oh, ‘Cannibal Parents’ was a particularly creative one. I think between the ages of five and seven, we got…eh, two hours sleep each.”

Stan let out a chuckle. Ford felt a certain warmth sink into his bones at the sound. It was a safe, comforting feeling. 

“But Shermie can’t be blamed for that time we went and saw that ‘Night of the Living Dead’ movie,” Ford said, reaching out his foot and playfully nudging Stan with it. “That was all you.”

Stan shook with another laugh and said, “To this day, I have never heard a fourteen year old boy scream quite like that. I was afraid you were gonna crack the lenses of your glasses.”

“Hey, at least I was actually watching the movie,” Ford replied. “Unlike you. Every time the zombies ate somebody, you were covering your eyes.”

“And which one of us had nightmares for a week? I sure don’t remember it being me.”

“Yeah, and in the time that I didn’t sleep, I found some very interesting facts about what to do in the event of an actual zombie apocalypse. They helped further my research when I got here.”

“See,” Stan said, leaning back, putting his hands behind his head in a reclining pose. “You should be thanking me. My awesome taste in movies helped with your nerd science.” 

Ford had no response. He simply stuck his tongue out.

“Oh, real mature, Poindexter,” Stan said, shaking once more with his laughter. “They teach you that in debate club?”

“For heaven’s sake, no. You learn that sort of pettiness in chess club.”

They continued to talk and joke and laugh, blissfully unaware of the time that passed. 

When they finally ended up falling asleep, at their opposite ends of the couch, their legs tangled up in each other’s from trying to stretch out and get comfortable, it was five-thirty in the morning, and the sun was struggling to peek over the horizon. The morning promised to be a cold one.

And, mercifully, Ford had not thought of his nightmares the entire time.

\-----------------------

Stan had a crick in his neck. He arched his back in a cat-like stretch, letting out a small, gasping groan as he felt the muscles pull, spreading the warmth of use through him. He must be going soft. He used to be able to sleep sitting up in his cramped front seat. Now he needed proper neck support. Wouldn’t be long before he started grumbling about rain coming when his knees acted up, like Grandma Pines before him.

His eyes adjusted slowly to the morning sun squeezing its way past the blinds, streaking the floor in pale, dusty yellow lines. On the floor beside him, Ripley lifted her drowsy head, and gave her head a violent shake. Her tags jingled merrily. She stood, pushed herself forward in a stretch, and let out a huge yawn, her tongue curling as it lolled out of her mouth. Then she trotted out of the room. Stan knew she was headed towards the front door, and if he didn’t get off his butt quick, she was going to start barking. 

He cast a gaze down at his twin, who was curled up on his end of the couch like a swaddled infant, arms and legs tucked protectively close to him. Stan slowly got up, to avoid waking him, but he figured it Ripley’s morning rituals couldn’t rouse Ford, nothing really would.

He stood and stretched his back again, wondering how his brother could sleep so soundly. After ten years of having to force himself to stay awake, often because his life depended on it, Stan didn’t know if he’d ever be able to sleep like that ever again. For a brief moment, he envied Ford. Then Ripley whined again, jostling him from himself.

He got to the door and opened it. Ripley walked out, and slowly made her way down the porch steps. Stan closed the door when she hit the bottom step. He’d recently gotten her trained to realize that she was not to leave the confines of the yard, and he generally could trust her not to get herself into too much trouble if he left her outside to her own devices. As long as their weren’t any gnomes in the garbage. That didn’t spell trouble for Ripley as much as it did for the gnomes themselves, as they’d all painfully discovered that a gnome was just about the size of one of Ripley’s bigger chew toys. 

Ford and Stan had managed to get her to drop Jeff before she got too excited, but the whole tribe was spooked enough not to come around their cans for a week. Not even for Chinese take-out.

He listened for a moment, and didn’t hear the cans so much as rustle. He figured the gnomes had already come and gone, and tottered into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. He hoped that would make up for feeling like he’d been repeatedly beaten with a shovel. 

He glanced up at the clock on the wall - 8:45 am. He knew that it had been about four when he’d finally given up on sleeping soundly and came into the living room to read. Then Ford had come in and he’d just lost track of time all together. 

He dug the coffee grounds out of the cupboard above the sink, and pulled the coffee maker up from its spot against the wall. He prayed to whatever merciful deity existed that it wanted to work today. The demonic appliance truly had a mind of its own, and it was a frustrating coin toss whether or not it would actually produce coffee. Best case scenario, it spat out some sludge-like substance that smelled godawful. Worst case, it blew up. Fortunately, that had only happened once, but Stan would rather not live through it again. A pair of his pajama pants still had flecks of dark brown stains on them from the incident. 

He reached up to the cupboard on the corner, and fished about for a mug. He pulled out one with Woody Woodpecker on it, smiling his mischievous smile at him. Mug now securely in hand, he leaned against the countertop, and waited. The machine groaned in protest, but otherwise did nothing. Stan pulled a hand down his face. He was not in the mood for this right now.

A soft whine invaded his thoughts of slamming the wretched coffee maker against the wall. Ripley wanted back in. Probably too cold for her to stay out there very long anyway. It was still February. 

Before Stan could peel himself away from the counter, he heard footsteps from the living room, his brother yawn a bit, making his way to the door. It opened, and Ripley bounded it. Apparently, an early morning pee was exactly the thing to hype a dog up in the morning. 

“Okay, Ripley, okay,” he heard Ford mutter. “I’ll feed you.”

“Morning,” Stan called out. 

“Hmm…yeah…good morning,” Ford replied. He appeared in the kitchen archway, his glasses askew on his face, and his hair bunched up ridiculously on the right side of his head. Ripley danced around his feet, impatient that the human was moving so slow with her promised breakfast.

“You look like death,” Stan said bluntly. 

“You’re not exactly a stunner yourself right now,” Ford said. He shuffled forward to the cupboard where they kept Ripley’s dog food, and Stan heard his brother’s back audibly pop as he reached up for it. Ripley was nigh hysterical, nearly knocking her bowl out of Ford’s hand when he bent to pick it up. 

“Please tell me that coffee maker is working this morning,” Ford added, the words almost swallowed up by a yawn as he dumped a cup of food into Ripley’s bowl. As soon as he placed it back on the floor, she shoved her face into it, and was lost to the world.

Stan turned back to the appliance in question. It sputtered again, but had still not produced any coffee. “It’s not looking like it,” he said with a sigh. 

Ford let out a frustrated moan. “We need to get a new one. Duct tape isn’t helping anymore.”

“Preaching to the choir, man. That’ll be our next big project.” 

“So what are we gonna do in the meantime? Honestly, even if that thing were working, I don’t think either of us are in a state deal with the open flames and popping grease that require us to cook.” 

“True,” Stan said, unplugging the doomed coffee maker. No sense in inviting more potential disaster. “I vote we make someone else do it. Let’s go to Greasy’s.”

“Ah, just what we need,” Ford mumbled, though a smile was poking through. “A breakfast we could use to block a leak in the Hoover Dam.”

“Yep. Just like what Mom used to make.”

“I guess my arteries aren’t gonna clog themselves,” Ford replied. “Although, I can’t help but think you just want to go there to hit on that waitress. What was her name, Sarah or something…”

“Susan, Sixer,” Stan said, walking past his brother and out of the kitchen. “Jeez, you’ve lived her for six years, and you don’t even know anyone’s names?”

“Nope. And they don’t know me,” Ford replied, following behind him, heading for the stairs. “Well, they do, but only as that creepy science guy. To them, I might as well be Dr. Frankenstein. I’m actually surprised they haven’t been up here with pitchforks and torches yet.”

“Seeing us together today might do the trick. You and I have never been in the same place in this entire town since I got here. Pretty no one but Helen even knows you have a brother. They’re probably gonna think you cloned yourself or something.”

“Dandy. I’ll fish out a lab coat and make you a fake hump. You can be my Igor.” 

“Like hell I will. I ain’t calling you master.”

“Stan, if you’re not going to commit to the roll, where’s the fun in any of this?”

Stan rolled his eyes. Only a few hours sleep certainly helped in making his brother more than a little loopy. “Shut up and go put on some clothes, ya doofus. Seeing you in space boxers might be enough to get an angry mob up here.”

“Then that begs the question,” Ford said, ascending the first few stairs, and giving a dramatic flourish, “who is the real monster - the humble man of science, or the people who can’t recognize awesome boxers when they see them?”

“I’m thinking it’s still the humble man of science in the nerdy boxers,” Stan replied, shaking his head and turning to head to his room.

He heard Ford give a melodramatic scoff as he climbed the rest of the stairs and mutter, “No respect for high fashion.”

\-----------------------

Ford let out a burp as he slumped a little in the front seat. He never wanted to move again. He knew that, when they got to the house, Stan was going to have to roll him up the porch steps and dump him in the living room. And from there, he was never going to move again. 

“Remind me again why I let you convince me to eat that food,” Ford muttered. 

“Two reasons,” Stan said, one hand on the steering wheel, the other being leaned against the window to prop up his head on a balled fist. “One, because that food is delicious. Two, because the look on Susan’s face when we walked in and she realized we looked damn-near identical was priceless. Don’t even try to deny it.”

“Okay, yeah, that was pretty funny,” Ford said, a slight smile crossing his face. “The fact that she screamed and drew the attention of everyone else in the diner was pretty great too.” Ford’s stomach gave a lurch. “Ugh, but that food sits like a rock. I don’t care how good it is going down.”

He’d managed to shovel in a short stack of pancakes, four pieces of bacon, and five cups of coffee into his gullet before his brain finally told him maybe this was enough. And by then, it had been too late.

“I’m just amazed you even touched that bacon. Would have figured the wrath of Ma would have put you off the stuff forever.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a bad Jew,” Ford grumbled, waving the comments off. “I don’t think I’ve been kosher since college. I tried a bacon cheeseburger for the first time when I was a freshman, and I’ve been hooked ever since.”

“Wow, Sixer, never pegged you to be such a rebel.”

“You think that’s bad? I realized later that it was the first day of Yom Kippur.”

“Ouch,” Stan said. “Bet Mom felt that all the way over in Jersey.” Stan lifted his head off his fist long enough to pretend to spit between his index and middle finger.”

“Well, it’s not like I didn’t already have a slew of other perfectly good reasons why I’m going to hell,” Ford said, leaning his head against the frigid glass of the passenger side window. His head was beginning to ache a bit, and it felt soothing against his skin.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence as Stan piloted the car back up the street. Ford scanned the sidewalks, looking at the world beginning to come to life around them. Shops were opening, parents and children walked the sidewalks, and other cars were beginning to putter down the street alongside theirs. 

This banality was almost as comforting to Ford as the glass pressed against his forehead. Here, he didn’t have to worry about the things that plagued him at night. There were no nightmares here. No memories to traipse about in his head. He could breathe easy. He thought that, maybe when he got home, he’d go to his bed and try to lie down. He needed to keep working on the portal, he wasn’t even halfway done with taking it down, but he figured it could wait. 

Then, out of the corner of his tired eyes, he saw him. He sat up in his seat like a shot, just in time to take in his face. It was like slow motion. The once kind and cheerful face was so thin and bony now. His hair was limp and hung around his cadaverous face. His body was hunched over, and he wore a long, ill-fitting red robe. His glasses were crooked. He looked so very, very tired.

Fiddleford McGucket was staring at him from an alleyway. 

“Stan, stop the car!” Ford shouted so suddenly and so urgently that Stan stomped the brakes and sent them both lurching forward, stopping only by the locking of their seatbelts.

“Ford, what the hell is wrong with you,” Stan asked, turning to face his brother. Ford didn’t answer him, he was too busy fumbling with the seat belt, his hands trembling violently. When it finally clicked open, he simply undid the lock on his car door, flung it open, and ran out. Stan called after him again, but Ford didn’t hear him over the honking of the car behind them. He just ran back towards the alley where he’d seen Fiddleford. 

His shoes slapped against pavement. His heart pounded in his ears. He hoped the Fiddleford hadn’t left. Or worse, that he’d never actually been there in the first place, and Ford’s sleep-deprived brain was just making him see what he wanted. 

As he turned the corner to look into the alley, he caught a flash of red from the robe Fiddleford had been wearing whip around the corner. He took off after it.

“Fiddleford!” he cried out. “Stop! Please stop!” He followed around the corner, and saw the robe billowing around Fiddelford’s skinny body as he ran. He could hear the other man breathing heavily, as if the few yards he’d run were actually miles and miles, and he was about to collapse under the strain. Ford continued running after him, even though his stomach, full of grease as it was, gurgled in protest. 

He had to catch him. He just had to. 

He saw Fiddleford glance over his shoulder, and was surprised to see the man’s eyes widen in fear. That fear seemed to give him a second wind, and he started gaining more distance between him and his pursuer. Ford was losing his steam. He knew it’d only be a matter of time until he lost him. He desperately wanted to catch Fiddleford, find out what all this was about, but he just couldn’t.

Suddenly, at the end of the alcove, Stan appeared. Ford heard Fiddleford let out strange sound, like a combination of a terrified shriek and a moan of agony. Fiddleford couldn’t slow his momentum in time, and collided right into Stan, who immediately wrapped his arms around him in a squeezing bear hug.

As soon as Fiddelford was pinned, he began to wail. “Let go of me, let me go!” he cried out, pulling frantically at the tight hold, like a wounded animal caught in a trap. 

When Ford caught up with them, Stan at least at the decency to stay quiet until Ford stopped wheezing like he was having a heart attack. As soon as his brother’s breathing evened out, he flicked a gaze at the weakly struggling man pinned in his arms, whose cries had, by now, died down into pathetic whimpers. “Do you mind explaining to me what the hell just happened,” he said. “You jump into traffic, and nearly get me rear-ended, all so you can chase some random hobo?”

Ford didn’t answer him right away. His attention stayed with Fiddleford, still trying to fruitlessly struggle in Stan’s arms, occasionally mumbling to be let go. He barely resembled the man Ford had known a mere four months prior. Looking at him this close, Ford could tell that he had lost a lot of weight. Already thin as a pipe, Ford could now see the bones of Fiddleford’s wrists clearly under his skin. His cheeks were sunken in. Ford could barely see the outline of his body underneath that robe, but he ventured to guess you could count the ribs when it was gone. He was actually afraid that, if Stan squeezed much harder, they’d hear the sickening sound of one of them cracking.

Stan snapped his name again, and Ford quickly turned his attention back to his brother’s angry gaze. He took a deep breath, to calm himself, and said, “Stan, this isn’t a random hobo. This is Fiddleford McGucket.”

Stan’s eyes grew wide. “That guy who was helping you with the portal?”

Ford nodded, and looked back to Fiddleford. His already weak struggles were growing even more so, but Ford realized that his eyes had never left his face. He looked into them - they were bloodshot, obviously having not seen sleep in days. As exhausted as they were, though, they held an alertness Ford knew to only be brought about when you were faced with something you knew could do you serious harm.

It broke his heart to see his friend giving him a look like that. 

Stan spoke again. “What the hell happened to him?”

Ford gulped. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. He took a step towards Fiddelford, but that only made the poor man shrink back against Stan’s chest. Apparently, even the burly man holding him in a bear hug was less frightening than letting Ford come near him. The guilt that bubbled up inside him was almost too much to bear.

“What I do know is that he needs help,” Ford said abruptly. He fought back the guilt as hard as he could, trying to let his logic help him figure this out. “We can take him back to the house, and then…then we’ll call Helen. She’ll know what to do.”

“Sixer, are you nuts,” Stan said. 

He had no time to continue, as something seemed to click inside Fiddleford‘s mind, and his struggles gained a second wind. He started to shriek, “No! God no, please don’t take me back there! Please! I can’t go back there! I can’t!”

If at all possible, Ford’s heart broke even more. He knew why Fiddleford didn’t want to go back to the house. And he knew that it was his fault it had happened at all in the first place. 

Stan tightened his grip on Fiddleford, trying to keep him from escaping. “Look, Ford, it’s not that I don’t agree with you. This guy needs all the help he can get. But a hospital should be doing that, not us.” 

“Stan, _please_ ,” Ford finally cried. He felt tears prick at his eyes. He didn’t know if he had the fortitude to hold them back right now. “Please…just let me take him back to the house. If Helen thinks he’s better off at a hospital, we’ll take him there. But please…I just…I need to do this for him, okay?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ford saw Fiddleford’s struggles begin to wane. He looked like he was running out of energy. As thin as he was, Ford wasn’t really all that surprised. He doubted if Fiddelford had eaten over the last few days. 

Even as he began to lose his steam, Fiddleford continued to watch Ford. Along with the wariness, there was a recognition there, as if he was suddenly realizing who he was looking at. For a moment, Ford saw his friend in those exhausted eyes.

Slowly, the eyes began to flutter shut, sleep beckoning the frail man. 

Ford looked at his twin. “Please, Stan,” he said simply.

After a moment of shifting his gaze between his brother and the semi-conscious man in his arms, Stan sighed, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Fine,” he grumbled. “But only long enough for Helen to check him out. She says he needs a hospital, he goes to a hospital, alright?”

Ford gave him a weary smile, and nodded. “I can drive,” he said thickly. “I think it’d be best if you sat in the backseat with him, in case he starts getting agitated again.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Stan muttered back, shifting Fiddleford’s limp body so he was carrying him bridal-style in his arms. He sounded as if he couldn’t believe he was actually going along with this. Part of Ford couldn’t believe that he was doing it himself.

But then, he’d never actually expected any of this to happen.

“Lucky for this little dweeb he weighs about as much as a bag of wet feathers,” Stan muttered. He began walking. “Come on, I parked just right up the street.”

Ford nodded and followed him.

As the two brother’s left the alley with their cargo, they didn’t notice a pair of eyes, watching them from the shadows. The hood of the figure’s red robe shielded their face, and whoever was inside grumbled in irritation. 

This was not good. 

Not good at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember when I said I would have this out like…two weeks ago? Hilarious, I know.
> 
> I would just like to apologize for the long wait, guys. This is what happens when you don’t plan your fics in advance. Warn your friends. These next two chapters are dedicated to my lovely @shaeeldera, who was an absolute goddess to proofread these chapters for me, so I could fix the fact that, at one point, Fiddleford literally could not even. I love you, my sweet!
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

“Friendship is like a glass ornament - once it is broken, it can rarely be put back together the same way.”  
\- Charles Kingsley

\-------------

Helen drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as she piloted her car deeper and deeper into the woods, the uneven back road making her car bob like crazy. Pretty soon, she’d hit the turn-off for Gopher Road, and she’d be at the house of the Pines brothers. 

She hoped they had a damn good explanation for this when she got there. 

She felt a headache pulse a bit as she recalled Stan’s call, rousing her from her measly four hours of sleep. She’d finally gotten herself tired enough to attempt it after getting about a third of the way done with the with the puzzle, around five. 

She vaguely recalled “murder” flashing through her mind as she fumbled for the phone on her bedside table, promising herself that she’d give whoever was on the other end a nice verbal castration. Teach them but good to try and bother people so early in the morning.

When she heard Stan’s gravely voice on the other end, she decided to at least wait to hear what he had to say before she yelled at him.

But the tone of Stan’s voice had let her know this was something that desperately needed her attention. Enough to get her to forget how tired she was, throw on her clothes, grab up her medical bag from its place by the door, and hop in her Buick to make a house call.

She flicked a glance over at said bag, which now occupied the front seat, sitting erect and ready to work against the leather. She knew that, in this day and age, hardly anyone made house calls. Not with advancing tests and more sterile environments that a hospital could provide. But those doctors didn’t live in Gravity Falls. Most people around here still thought summer hail storms were the work of a vengeful witch. 

Not that they were wrong to suspect such things (though Ford put the probability of a witch that could control weather that only used it for hail storms pretty low), it just made the townsfolk frustratingly distrusting of hospitals. 

So, in Gravity Falls, the house call business was alive and well. 

Helen’s head throbbed again, and she moved a hand from the steering wheel to massage her temple a bit. She knew that was risky on this curvy, often-times treacherous road, but she was willing to take the chance. Any kind of relief was welcome right now. Anything to chase out the anxiety and tension.

Finally, the trees parted into a clearing, and the small house the brothers shared came into view. Stan’s El Diablo was parked off to the side, and Helen edged her car in next to it, killing the engine.

To the unfamiliar, the house looked beaten-up, possibly even a bit ominous. The stark Oregon winter hadn’t helped make it look any more welcoming, and the fact that it had fallen somewhat into disrepair had fueled more than a few local rumors that it was haunted or was hiding dark, horrible secrets. Sometimes both.

Helen knew better. It wasn’t such a bad place, and magnificent things had been discovered there. A lifetime of knowing her home was weirder than anyone was willing to admit was confirmed because of this house. To Helen, it bore none of the mystique. If anything, it was comforting. A place for friends. And even though Stan had sounded so strange and concerned over the phone, she knew that they would all solve this together.

She opened her door, reached over to grab her bag, and got out, walking up to the porch. As she walked up the porch steps, she heard the front door open, and looked up to see Stan looking down at her. “Hey,” he said, raising a limp hand to wave. “Thanks for coming. Sorry we woke you.”

She waved off the apology. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. She smiled mischievously as she added, “It’s only one of my few weekends off. Why sleep in when I can patch up my favorite knuckleheaded boys?”

Stan didn’t return the smile, simply saying, “Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better about waking you.” He held the door open for her, and she walked past him into the house. She heard harried footsteps pacing back and forth in the living room, so she started walking in that direction, wondering if Stan was well enough to answer the door, and Ford to pace, who it was that needed her. 

Her first look at Ford made her think that maybe she’d been wrong about him being okay. His face was lined with worry. His arms were clutched around his stomach tightly, as if he were going to be sick at any minute. He looked like a hot mess.

“Are you alright,” she asked. Her voice seemed to get Ford’s attention, as he stopped pacing and looked up at her, a slight look of relief blossoming over his face. She gave him a quick, reassuring smile, and said, “What’s the problem? Are you sick?”

“No,” Ford replied. He sounded far away. “It’s not me. It’s…a friend of mine. His name is Fiddleford. He…he needs help, and…so we brought him here.” 

“Here? And not, I don’t know, a hospital?” Helen arched her eyebrow. 

“That’s what I told him,” Stan said from the entryway. Helen could hear the annoyance in his voice. For reasons she didn’t really understand, it put her on edge. 

“Stan and I agreed to call you first. If you think he needs to go to a hospital, we’ll take him there,” Ford replied. His arms seemed to go tighter around his middle. Helen was really started to get worried that he was getting sick. Then she’d have two problems.

“Well, I don’t exactly agree that that was a smart move,” she said. Ford’s face fell, and it made her feel like she’d been punched. She had no idea men who were practically in their thirties could look so very upset and lost. She quickly added, “But I’ll take a look. Where is he?”

“Upstairs. In my room,” Ford answered quietly. He still looked like a chastened child, one that had done something wrong and was being punished for it, but didn’t fully understand why. Gaze fixed firmly on the floor, Ford walked past her, past Stan, and headed for the stairs. She followed him, catching Stan’s face, still etched with annoyance, but with concern beginning to seep through. She heard him follow behind her as they reached the stairs.

As they ascended, Ford said, “He’s been asleep for about half an hour now. He just looks really bad. I don’t know how long it’s been since he slept or ate or anything…”

Ford trailed off, ducking his head down further, shame plain on his face. Helen, keeping her voice as calm and professional as she could, asked, “Do you know how he got this way?”

Ford didn’t answer her as they climbed the last stair into the hallway. Stan came up beside her, and said, “Ford, if you want her to help this guy, you gotta tell her what she needs to know.”

Ford stopped in his tracks, still hunched over, like he was prepared to fend off blows he had no hope of returning. He finally stopped clutching at his stomach, and turned to face them, lacing his now free hands behind his back. Helen had seen him do it many times before, when he explained an anomaly he’d discovered that day, any time he wanted to puff himself up, look important and smart. It looked very wrong now. Defensive, instead of proud. “I don’t know how he got this way,” Ford said. “When he left the project last year…I thought he just went back home. He used to live in Palo Alto… He was in the middle of a divorce, so I thought…I thought he was busy with that, and that was why I hadn’t heard from him, but then…”

Ford immediately pulled his arms forward to latch around his stomach again, as if trying to soothe away a jolt of pain. Helen readied herself. Ford sincerely looked like he wouldn’t be able to stop what was threatening to come up. Stan, making a few quick strides, went to Ford’s side, and placed a hand on his shoulder. The touch seemed to do the trick in calming Ford down, at least enough to continue, after he’d sucked down a deep breath and let it out shakily. “We went out for breakfast this morning, and I saw him when we passed an alleyway. He…He looked so terrible, and I was so shocked to see him that I hopped out of the car and chased after him.” Helen watched as Ford’s eyes misted over a bit. He quickly ducked his head so she wouldn’t see. 

Stan had noticed his brother getting emotional as well and took over for him. “Almost got us in an accident. We chased him through the alley, and I eventually caught up with him You’d have thought we were chasing him down to murder him or something, the way he fought. He’s so skinny he couldn’t have done much damage anyway, but damn, he did not want to be around us.”

Helen nodded a bit, and said, “Well, I’ll look for signs of dehydration and starvation, infected injuries, things like that. There’s not a lot I would be able to do for any of that, but at least we’d know what needed to be done. If he wakes up before I finish, I might be able to ask him some questions.”

Both brothers nodded solemnly. Helen took a deep breath and said, “Let’s get started.” 

Stan, still with his hand on his brother’s shoulder, guided him towards the bedroom door, and Helen followed behind them. Ford managed to remove a hand from his stomach long enough to turn the knob and open the door, and they stepped aside to let her in. 

The first thing that tipped her off to the presence of another human being was the smell, coming from the bed, masked only slightly by an ugly green afghan. There really wasn’t any way to describe it other than “dirty” - what happened when someone had not had access to a shower, and were forced to let the dirt, sweat, grime, and other disgusting things that built up on them linger, combining in a truly potent odor. 

As she moved closer to the bed, she finally saw the tiny body of the man Ford called Fiddleford, buried beneath the aforementioned afghan. To an untrained eye, it would almost have looked like this small man was dead. His chest rose and fell with each breath he took so subtly, it was difficult to see unless you were paying attention. When she was close enough, Helen put two fingers to the man’s neck, just to check. She felt a pulse there, at a surprisingly normal speed for a sleeping person, despite how emaciated he looked from his face alone. She set her medical bag on the floor, and sat down on the edge of the bed. 

Gently, so as not to rouse him, she pulled back the afghan and began gingerly looking him over. He laid on his side, in only a pair of tattered khaki dress pants. His chest was exposed, showing off a set of very visible ribs. It was very clear this man had not seen a full meal in some time. She picked up an arm, and, cradling it by the wrist so the palm was face down, she gently pinched a bit of skin between her thumb and forefinger, then let go a moment later. The skin took a moment before slowly flattening out again. Dehydration, though not as bad as it could have been. At least the skin snapped back at all.

As she moved to place his arm back down, she felt a something strange in the small man’s wrist. Using her free hand, she gently felt around the area. She knew there’d been something…a bit like a lump…there! There was definitely something out of place in the man’s wrist. Possibly post-traumatic wrist arthritis. She shuddered a bit. She hadn’t asked how long Ford and Stan thought this poor guy had been out there, but if he’d had time to injure his wrist and have it heal badly, she ventured to guess at least a few months. 

She turned her head to face the brothers, who stood near the door. Both looked horribly out of place. “It looks like he hurt his wrist a while back,” she said, her tone even. “It either wasn’t set or was set by someone who didn’t know what they were doing, because it’s slightly out of place. We’ll need to take him in to get it reset. It’s probably causing him a lot of pain the way it is.”

Another flicker of shame crossed Ford’s face as he said, “Is that it?”

“He’s pretty dehydrated, and there’s obvious signs of starvation. This guy has had it rough. When did you say he left?”

“About four months ago.”

“Stan, does this look like someone who’s been homeless four months?”

Stan shrugged, and said, “Not really. He looks like he’s been out there for way longer than that. Of course, it really all just depends on the situation. The guys who were…kinda off were always worse off than the ones that weren’t. I knew guys who’d been on the streets for decades, and they didn’t look as bad as that poor schmuck. Hard to take care of yourself when you’re not all there to begin with, know what I mean?”

Helen nodded, her lips pressed into a grim line. “That’s all I can tell from just looking at him,” she said. She set the wrist back down on the bed, softly so as not to cause him any pain, and pulled her bag closer to her with her foot. She bent down to pop it open, and pulled out a stethoscope. “I’m gonna check out his lungs. As soon as you two get the chance, you might want to wash your hands. Maybe even take hot showers. There’s been a pretty bad string of flu this year, and there’s a distinct chance he might have caught it with how little he seems to have been taking care of himself. I’m gonna check and make sure he isn’t having trouble breathing. That should give me a good clue to whether he’s sick or not.”

She placed the earpieces of the stethoscope in her ears, and the world became a tad bit muffled. She reached out, intending to turn Fiddleford further onto his stomach to get at his back.

She had barely moved him an inch when his eyes shot open, and he was staring up at her like she was some kind of unholy nightmare. 

The shriek that gradually filled the room almost seemed inhuman - high-pitched, animalistic, and full of a primal fear of death. It took Helen more than a minute to notice that it was coming from the man in front of her. Even muffled, it sent shivers down her spine. 

It seemed to happen in slow motion. He was suddenly coming at her, lunging at her like a starved predator launching itself at road kill. 

Helen threw herself off the side of the bed, missing the man grabbing at her by a few inches. He managed to catch the paddle of her stethoscope, ripping it from her ears and tossing it aside. It struck the far wall and landed in a heap on the floor. Helen ended up landing on the floor on her backside. In an attempt to catch herself, she shot out an arm, but only succeeded in knocking over her medical bag. 

She started to edge away, pushing at the floor with her sneakered feet, but the man moved with surprising speed. He leapt at her again when he realized she’d moved, another awful shriek bursting forth from his lungs. She threw her arms up, protecting her neck if he made a grab for it. She managed to get a look at his face as he moved towards her, and saw there, not malice, but incredible desperation. 

He wasn’t a predator. 

He was prey, and thought he was fighting for his own survival.

She heard Stan and Ford start running up behind her, both shouting frantically. Fiddelford’s attention was drawn to them, and he immediately stopped dead. For a brief second, he looked almost utterly ridiculous, kneeling like some kind of goblin on the floor, ready to pounce on a defenseless woman. This could have been something out of a ridiculous fairy tale. 

Then, the situation exploded, and the man began shrieking again. This time, however, there was no urge to fight in it. There was only fear. As quickly and deftly as he’d leapt forward, the man now scrambled back, as far from the group as he could. Helen realized that his shrieks were not just frightened gibberish, but words. The man practically sobbed, “Oh god, no. I can’t be back here. I can’t! Oh god, why am I here again?! Please, let me out of this place! This place is evil! Oh god, _let me out!”_

With this last pained shout, the man curled up in as tiny a ball as he could manage, burying his head in his knees, and wrapping an arm defensively around himself. The arm with the injured wrist stayed cradled protectively in his lap. Helen even noticed he was beginning to rock himself back and forth. He still muttered, though it was so quiet, she could barely make out more than a “please” and a “no” every other word. 

For several moments, the pitiful whimpering of the small man in the corner was the only sound in the room. Helen waited for the furious beat of her heart to slow. She’d dealt with erratic patients in the past, but there were no words for what had just happened.

She chanced a glance up at two brothers. Stan looked completely dumbfounded. Obviously, this was not the way he’d planned on his morning going. Ford, on the other hand, looked devastated, like his world was crumbling around him. He looked sicker than he had since Helen got here. She could see a thin sheen of sweat starting to form on his face. He balled his pants up in a trembling hand. Helen figured he was, maybe, a few minutes away from having a full-blown panic attack. 

She quickly pulled herself together, and spoke up. “You two need to leave,” she said, her voice more firm and authoritative than she felt at the moment. 

Stan seemed to snap out of his shocked stupor to look down at her like she’d asked him to run to Canada. “Are you crazy?” he demanded. “We’re not leaving you up here with him. He tried to strangle you.”

“I’m a big girl, Stan,” she said. She grabbed the side of the bed to pull herself up. She tried not to show that her legs still wobbled a bit as her adrenaline drained away. “I’ve been doing this for almost ten years, dealing with druggies and criminals and people who were nearly mauled by mountain lions. I can handle a scared featherweight.” She brushed a stray hair out of her face, trying to look nonchalant.

“Besides, you need to take care of him right now,” she added somberly, tilting her head in Ford’s direction. Ford didn’t look like he was even aware they were talking. His eyes had not left the trembling, whimpering man in the corner. “This is shaking him up a lot more than he’s willing to admit. Take him downstairs, and try to get him to calm down. If you can, get him to talk about this. I’m gonna need answers when this is all said and done.”

The fight seemed to drain out of Stan. He eventually nodded, and gently took his brother’s arm. Ford offered only a little resistance, but let himself be dragged away, and out of the room. Stan left the door open. Helen supposed that was more for their benefit than hers. 

She looked back to the shaking man in the corner, and felt a chill jolt down her spine. She had been brought into Ford’s world thinking it to just be a quaint, eccentric place that might offer her some answers to questions she’d been asking since she was five years old, and saw things in the woods behind her house that no one could or wanted to explain. 

It was starting to look like there was more to this that she ever realized. Something dark. Something she didn’t know if she really should be getting involved in. Her thoughts flashed briefly to her children. 

But then she heard a pained cry come from the man in the corner. She looked over at him, and saw that his skeletal little body was practically convulsing with his sobs. If at all possible, her heart broke even more for him. The words she’d uttered as a graduate echoed in her mind - _“I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required…”_

She sighed and took a few tentative steps towards Fiddleford. When she was within arm’s reach, she crouched down, and in the gentlest, most maternal voice she could muster - a voice she barely used these days as her children grew older, and their need for her soft reassurances dwindled - began to shush the sobbing man. Before she could stop herself, she reached out a slightly trembling hand, and placed it on the wild nest of sandy brown hair. She managed to give it a quick stroke before the man’s head shot up, a look in his eyes like she’d purposely burned him. 

She maintained the air of calm. There was nothing strange about this. This was something she did every day for this poor man. She needed him to believe that she was his friend. 

She smiled warmly. “Hi,” she said, her voice sweet like honey. It almost sounded as if she were talking to a toddler. “My name’s Helen. I’m a doctor.”

Strangely enough, the young man looked at her with the same watery confusion that belonged to many very young children, taking their first tottery steps and turning their heads this way and that, trying to comprehend this strange place they’ve been suddenly plunked into.

She moved slowly, removing her hand from his head, then relaxing her knees and lowering herself down, until she was sitting on the floor, Indian-style. “My friends asked me to come here and take care of you,” she said. “What’s your name?” It was an innocent question, meant to get him talking, even though she already knew the answer. 

A beat of silence passed between them. The watery, fearful eyes never left her. Her smile never wavered She hoped she was at least making it known she wasn’t a threat. 

When he finally spoke, his voice was so clear, it rang through the quiet room like a shot - “I don’t know.”

Her smile slipped a bit in confusion, and she tilted her head. “Don’t know what?”

“My name,” he said, lifting his head up a bit more. “I don’t rightly remember it.” His voice was gentle, non-confrontational. He spoke with an accent, maybe Midwestern or Southern. She couldn’t tell. 

She certainly hadn’t been expecting such an answer. Maybe Stan had been right in his assumption of this guy being mentally ill. She couldn’t think of many other scenarios where someone would forget their own name. 

But Ford would know this guy better than any of them, and the episode upon him waking definitely seemed to have taken him by surprise. This obviously was not normal for the man sitting across from her. Some kind of disassociative amnesia? But that generally only effected memories about whatever traumatic events had caused it in the first place. Maybe some kind of brain damage was responsible. They wouldn’t be able to know that for sure until they got him to the hospital. She’d need to get as much information about what he did remember then, if she was going to able to make sure they tested for the right stuff. There were a battery of questions they asked patients that could possibly have Alzheimer’s. She’d start with those. 

“Do you know what year it is?” 

The question seemed to legitimately stump him. He raised his head up a bit more, a look of deep concentration on his face. After a moment or two of silence, he said, “1982? It’s still winter, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Do you know what month it is?” 

He shook his head. “The days,” he said, “they all start running together. Pretty soon, you start losing weeks, then months…”

He trailed off, his eyes glazing over a bit. He seemed a million miles away from her, lost in his own little world. She spoke again, trying to catch his attention, “Do you know who the president is?”

The sound of her voice seemed to bring him back, even though, when he turned his eyes to look at her, there was barely an ounce of recognition. He blinked once, before saying, “Some actor fella. Hair looks bigger than his brains.” He sounded confused, like she was the one who was strange for asking him such a question. 

She hoped he wouldn’t clock out again, because she couldn’t be sure how he’d react if it happened again. He’d already narrowed his eyes at her, like he was sizing her up, judging if she were someone he really needed to be talking to. “Do you know where you are, right now?” she probed gently.

“Gravity Falls, Oregon,” he replied quickly. She was shocked when a tiny, almost proud smile twitched across his face. “That I do recall. I do so much here. I could never forget that.”

“That’s right,” she said, not wanting to mention how much the smile unnerved her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he meant by “doing so much”. “But do you recognize this room? This house? You seemed to a few minutes ago.”

The fear was back in his eyes immediately. That far-away look was back. He was reliving something, something only he could see. The trembling racked his frame once more. Helen tensed herself, ready to defend herself if he decided to have another outburst. 

Instead, he started mumbling again. “This house,” he said, his tone flat. “Yes, I remember this house. I remember it. I try not to. But no matter how many times I do it, it all comes back. I try to purge its evil from my mind, but it just keeps. Coming. _Back!_ ” He raised a bony fist, and began pounding it against his head, punctuating his words. Helen immediately scrambled up and closer to him, grabbing his wrist to keep him from hitting himself.

He seemed to ignore her, continuing to mutter, his words only getting louder. “I just want to stop seeing it!” he cried, his voice growing hoarse. “Every time I close my eyes, it’s there! Why won’t it leave me in peace?! Why do they all feel peace when I can’t?! Why can’t I clear my mind?!”

Suddenly, the man burst into sobs, burying himself against Helen’s chest. She felt her shirt began to soak a bit, and she wrapped her arms around this poor creature, wanting desperately to hide him from these demons she didn’t understand. Then, underneath all his sobbing, she heard him pitifully whimper, “My mind is clear…my mind is clear…my mind is clear…”

My mind is clear. Why was that so familiar?

It was then that she noticed the shock of red. It was draped over the sofa lining the walls. Slowly, gently, she pried the sobbing man off her front, and left him to his crying for the time being. She needed to see. Needed to make sure. 

She walked around the end of the bed, and reached out her hand to grab the red robe that had been slung across it. She stopped in mid-air, letting her hand hang for a moment. She could be wrong. It could not have it. But she had to make sure. She closed her hand around the robe and pulled it towards her. She found the hood, and stuck her hand inside, spanning it out with her fingers.

Staring back at her was an eye, crossed out with an X.

\-----------------------

Stan slid the kitchen trash can between Ford’s knees, despite the fact Ford had mumbled several times that he wasn’t going to throw up, he didn’t need it.

The truth was, Ford wasn’t entirely sure he believed his own lie any more than Stan did. His breakfast churned in his stomach, not at all helped by the pounding in his head. It made his eyes pulsate. He reached up a shaky hand, and pulled his glasses off. He set them by his side on the sofa. The world was now a blurry mess, but it made him feel the slightest bit less nauseous. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about the incident upstairs. It played over and over in his mind, sometimes spliced together with the memory of the day Fiddleford almost fell through the portal. 

He had done this. The mess that had unfolded upstairs was his fault. All his fault. He ruined Fiddleford’s life.

“This is all my fault.” He was shocked to hear his own voice, shaking and trembling like a child. It made his stomach turn again.

“Don’t beat yourself up so much about this, Sixer,” Stan said. He had not left Stan’s side since they’d gotten downstairs, and now stood like a sentry at the arm of the sofa. “You had no way of knowing what happened to him.”

“That’s not an excuse,” Ford snapped, regretting the harshness in his tone instantly. He ran a hand down his face, and came away with it glazed with sweat. “I should have kept in contact with him. I didn’t hear from him at all after he left. I just…I always assumed he went back to California, to settle things with Emma…god, I’m a monster…I just hurt everyone…”

Ford felt the sob bubble up from his chest, a deep, dark place in his heart, and erupt from his mouth with incredible intensity. He put his face back in his hand. He felt Stan put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Don’t talk like that,” Stan said firmly. “You couldn’t have known. And even if you did, what could you have done? That triangle bastard was putting you through the ringer too. When I showed up here, you were as big a mess as McGucket. You couldn’t have done much to help him.”

Ford remembered when Stan first showed up at his door, the first time they’d seen each other in ten years. He didn’t think about how bad he himself had been though. His own situation had been nothing compared to Stan’s. Which, incidentally, Ford had caused as well. Stan had repeatedly told Ford that he didn’t hold that against him anymore, and their relationship had been mending. Even Ford had been beginning to forgive himself for that one awful mistake. 

But how could he now? How could he ever forgive himself for this? Stan had at least been mobile all those years, making it harder to track him down. Fiddleford had been right there, in the same town, and he hadn’t done anything to help him. A simple drive into town, and he could have saved his friend from four months of homelessness, mental stress, a goddamn broken wrist that had no explanation, even though Ford wasn’t sure he could handle one even if there was. 

But no, he was the secretive scientist, who preferred that he never had to deal with any of the small-minded townsfolk, hiding away in his house in the woods, never letting anyone in, never caring about anyone but himself. He couldn’t even blame Bill for that. Bill might have convinced him that he was more intelligent, more creative, all-around better than the bumpkins in town, than most of the human race, but it wasn’t like those thoughts came out of nowhere. 

Bill hadn’t sewn the seeds. He merely nursed them into blooming. 

He was already a horrible person, long before he’d ever chanted those ancient words to summon Bill. 

That loneliness that plagued him any time he thought of Fiddleford these days began closing in around him, and he let it. He barely felt the reassuring hand of his brother on his shoulder, it made him feel so numb. All he wanted to do was hide in the basement, surrounded by those broken bits of portal, far away from any other lives he might destroy. He knew he deserved that.

His stomach roiled again, and he thought for sure this time, his greasy breakfast was going to come up. At this point, he’d welcome the pain of heaving it up. It would serve him right, a pittance for what he’d put his friend through. A tiny moan of pain escaped him, and that alerted Stan.

“I’m gonna get you some water,” Stan said, removing his hand from Ford’s shoulder with one last squeeze. “I’ll be right back. If you feel like you gotta puke, don’t hold it back. Just…try to aim for the trash can, alright?”

Ford didn’t respond. He heard Stan give a sigh as he went to the kitchen. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ripley, who had respectfully stayed away from the harried humans since they’d brought Fiddleford into the house, sitting on the floor by his desk. Her head tilted to one side, her ears flopping a bit. She didn’t understand what was happening, but from the low whine she gave, she didn’t like it. She rose, and trotted over to Ford, stopping by his knee. Before Ford could shoo her away, she laid her head down on his knees, looking up at him with wide, loving eyes. As if it weren’t apparently obvious from the day Stan dragged her home, Ford saw in that moment why he’d gotten so attached to her. 

He heard Stan walk back into the living room, and a glass of water came into his view. He removed a hand from around his stomach, and took it. “Thanks,” he muttered. He didn’t make a move to drink. He just held it in front of him, watching the water ripple from the shaking in his hands.

Muffled shouting suddenly echoed from upstairs, and it hit Ford like a slap to the face. 

Stan must have seen the way Ford’s shoulders tensed like he’d just heard a bomb go off. He came around to the front of the couch, and Ford felt the cushion next to him depress under his brother’s weight. Stan gingerly put an arm around Ford, and pulled him close. Ford was surprised when that black feeling seemed to ebb a little, having a familiar body pressed close to his. He fleetingly thought to put his head against Stan’s chest, to listen to the rhythmic sounds of his heartbeat. 

Stan spoke lowly and said, “He’s gonna be okay, Ford. I promise you. We fixed the mess that was my life, we can fix this. We’ll get him to the hospital, and we’ll help him through this. You’ll be able to make this up to him.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to make this up to him, Stan,” Ford said. His voice was embarrassingly shaky. 

Stan squeezed him a little closer, and said, “Sure you will. Before you know it, ol’ Fidds will be back on his feet and nerding again with you in no time. Betcha it’ll be nice having someone around who actually understands all those big words you use.”

Ford couldn’t help but laugh, albeit weakly. “Are you seriously going to call him ‘Fidds’?”

“Hey, ‘Fiddleford’ is a mouthful. Besides, if we’re gonna be pals, he’s gotta have a nickname. Or I could call him ‘Skinny’,” Stan said, grinning a bit.

“I do not think he’d appreciate that.”

“Ah, well, far be it from me to make a man feel unwelcome in our home. I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”

“I actually think Fidds would be fine,” Ford said. “That girl we used to hang out with in college always called him that. She was actually the first person aside from you to ever call me Ford, too.”

“Nice to know you found a replacement for me during your lonely college days, Poindexter,” Stan said, gently nudging his twin with his shoulder. The black stain grew even smaller.

Leave it to Stan to take him out of himself, at least for a moment.

He was only able to enjoy the feeling for a few more minutes, before they heard footsteps leaving his room, and the door close gently. 

Ford lifted his heavy head just enough to see Helen coming down the stairs, clutching the red robe Fiddleford had been wearing in her hand. She walked like a woman with a purpose. 

When she hit the bottom step, she walked briskly into the living room, her sneakers thudding so loudly against the hardwood that they startled Ripley away from Ford’s leg. The poor frightened dog trotted away to a squeaky toy lying by Ford’s desk, chewing herself to calm.

Helen’s focus, however, was zeroed in on the brothers. “Do either of you know what this symbol means?” she asked. She held the robe forward, and spread it out enough to where they could see a needlework eye, stitched over by a large red X. 

Ford quickly ran through the dozens of arcane symbols and hieroglyphs that he’d ever seen. None of them looked remotely like the one Helen was showing them. That didn’t stop it from sending an uneasy shiver down Ford’s spine as he shook his head.

“Never seen it before,” Stan added, squinting, as if to see it more clearly. “And I’ve seen more than a few symbols for bike gangs…”

“Do you know what it means, Helen,” Ford asked, trying not to think too hard about why his brother knew the symbols of biker gangs. He was already dealing with enough.

“No, but I have seen it before,” she replied, turning the robe over in her hands. She worked a thumb over the symbol. “There was a case at the hospital. I wasn’t there that day, but a friend of mine was. He told me about it after the fact, because he told me it was probably the strangest thing he’s ever come across in the thirty years he’s been at that hospital.”

Ford and Stan stared. Helen must have felt their gazes on them, as she looked up and muttered, “I know. That’s why it stands out in my mind.” 

She continued, “It happened back in November, before the first big cold snap. A teenage girl was brought in by her parents, all wide-eyed and ghostly pale. She kept muttering something about seeing a…creature, in the lake.” 

Ford furrowed his brow. He hadn’t really done a thorough investigation of Lake Gravity Falls, but he didn’t doubt there were creatures there that would be enough to send anyone into a panic were they to come across it, let alone a teenage girl. 

“The strange thing was,” Helen said, “we confirmed with her parents that she and her friends had been at the lake the day the girl mentioned. But when they talked to her friends, none of them had any idea what she was talking about. None of them remembered that day, not one detail. It was like it’d never happened. They tried to talk to the girl and get more information out of her, but she just kept repeating ‘My mind is clear.’ over and over.”

Eerie silence hung oppressively in the air for a few moments. 

Stan broke it. “So, what happened?”

“They dredged the lake,” Helen replied. “They thought that she might have seen a body there, or something, and was just traumatized. But no one saw anything. Hardly even any fish. One guy tried to be funny and said he saw the Loch Ness Monster down there, but that got old pretty fast. The last I heard, the girl’s parents took her up to Portland for psychiatric care.”

Another beat of deathly silence.

Ford swallowed hard, and then asked, “What does this have to do with the symbol?” 

Helen pushed up her glasses, pinching the bridge of her nose. She let them fall back down and said, “The girl was carrying a piece of paper, that had gotten stuck in the sleeve of her sweater, because she was clutching it so tight. It fell out as her parents were taking her away. This symbol was on it in red ink.”

The silence was thick enough to slice with a knife. 

“Until now, I thought Ed was just embellishing the story, to freak me out,” Helen said gravely. “He knows how I’m interested in the supernatural, and likes to poke fun at me about it. But your friend said the exact same thing as that girl - ‘My mind is clear.’”

The implications of what Helen said finally sank in. “Wait,” Ford said, “you’re not implying…you think Fiddleford had something to do with what happened to that girl?”

“It is a little coincidental, don’t you think?” Helen said. Her voice was calm and maternal, as it always was. Ford usually liked that. It was a voice that made him feel comforted, one her respected and valued. Now, it just filled him with anger.

“He wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Ford said. He stood up quickly, fists clenched by his sides, almost knocking over the trash can. Stan had to shoot out an arm quickly to keep it upright. “He couldn’t hurt anyone. He’s the sweetest man I’ve ever met. He wouldn’t even let me kill spiders! The very idea that…that he could do anything to someone…to a teenager, it’s…it’s ludicrous!”

“Sixer, calm down,” Stan said. Ford felt him rise off the couch, and put his hand back on his shoulder. Instead of the comfort it provided earlier, Ford shrugged it off; a little more forcefully than intended, but he was too peeved to think about that at the moment.

“How can I calm down, when she’s standing here accusing Fiddelford McGucket of hurting someone?!” Ford’s face felt hot, and he knew his voice was only getting louder and angrier. This was not helping anything. It never helped when he lost his cool like this. He needed to reign it in. But he just couldn’t help himself. 

“Ford, I’m not accusing him of anything,” Helen said, her tone still infuriatingly even. “I’m just saying that there might be some connection between him and that girl. For all we know, someone hurt him the same way they hurt her. We can’t be sure of anything, because he’s not even that sure of anything. He can’t even remember his own name right now.”

Ford’s gut churned at the thought of Fiddleford suffering even more than he eventually realized, but something nagged in his mind. “How…” he began, his mind moving so quickly that his words needed a bit to catch up. “How can he remember this house and what happened here, but not his own name? That doesn’t make any sense…”

“I was hoping you’d be able to answer that,” Helen replied. “It might have something to do with whatever happened to him. And you’re the only one who knows what that was.”

Ford felt his cheeks flush a bit. It was the only time in his life he ever recalled feeling sheepish about being the smartest in the room. He honestly didn’t know how Helen would react to knowing he’d opened a dimensional gateway in his basement. Hell, he’d only told Stan the barest of details, that Fiddleford had “an accident” while they were working on the portal. Helen was curious about the supernatural, sure, but this wasn’t exactly a discussion of gnomes and fairies over tea. This was talk of Armageddon, one that he’d nearly caused, and one that Fiddleford may have witnessed firsthand, if only for a few fleeting seconds. 

He could feel Helen and Stan’s eyes watching him, waiting for his explanation. He gulped, turning the idea of telling Helen about dream demons and interdimensional portals and the possibility of the end of the world. Would she understand? If he didn’t even feel comfortable enough explaining it to his own brother, he didn’t know if he could do it to this woman who was more of a casual observer than someone who was directly involved. He didn’t think he could drag her into this.

“He, um…there was an accident,” Ford stammered out. He wished that he sounded more sure of himself. He could have really used the confidence he often felt when he was analyzing and observing. “We were working on a project in the basement, and…Fiddleford…he was…he hurt himself. I think it traumatized him a lot…he was…pretty unresponsive, when I finally managed to…get to him.” Another memory of Fiddleford’s wide eyes, staring at nothing, flashed in Ford’s eye. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to drive it away. 

“He quit after that,” Ford continued. He had to fight to get the words out, as they almost threatened to stick in his dry throat. “Told me what I was doing was too dangerous. I didn’t even care at the time…I was only concerned with my life’s work…” He trailed off. God, he hoped he wouldn’t start crying again. If he could never cry again for the rest of his life, he wouldn’t mind at all. 

Helen finally removed her gaze. Ford hadn’t noticed how piercing it seemed until it was gone. 

“So, what now, doc?” Stan asked, shoving his hands in the pocket of his jeans.

“Well, Fiddleford is pretty wiped out from that episode earlier. When I came down here, he was still huddled up in the corner, but he seemed to be losing steam. I’ll go back up in a few minutes, after he’s calmed down a bit more, and try to convince him to let us take him to the hospital. You two will have to wait in the car until I get him out.”

Ford opened his mouth to start protesting. He wasn’t just going to be sidelined like this. This was his friend they were talking about, his colleague. He was going to help him. But he barely got out a syllable before Helen cut him off. “I know you want to help him, Ford, but I really don’t think it’s a good idea. I think, even if he doesn’t remember exactly why, he’s afraid of you. Based on his reaction upstairs, I’d say he connects you with the accident.”

Ford slumped, feeling like a great weight had been placed on his shoulders. He felt so utterly useless.

Stan began opening his mouth, but Helen turned her head to him, and said, “And before you say anything, I have about thirty pounds on him. I don’t need you up there freaking him out more.”

“What makes you think I’ll freak him out more?” Stan protested.

“Gee, you’re right. I can’t think of anything more relaxing than a guy who looks exactly like the person I associate with my trauma standing there all imposing with his arms that could crush me like a grape.”

“Okay, fine,” Stan grumbled, and began to trump away, looking dejected. “I’ll fire up the car.” As he began to walk towards the front door, he turned back to Helen with a slight smirk on his face and said, “But I’m taking that ‘arms that could crush you like a grape’ comment as a compliment, doc.”

Helen shook her head, and said, “Take them where you can get them, I suppose.” She began to head towards the stairs. “Hopefully,” she said, “I’ll be down in a few minutes.” And with that, she briskly went back up the steps, and disappeared upstairs. 

Ford stared after her for the longest time. For all his brain power, for all his intellect and cold reasoning, for all the knowledge he’d gained in twenty-eight years of life, he’d never felt so utterly useless. In a fleeting thought, he wondered why he even needed to be involved in this now, since it was his fault it was happening in the first place.

“Hey, Poindexter,” Stan called out. Ford turned his head quickly to look at his brother, who was watching him with an unreadable face. Ford thought he might have seen some concern and sympathy there, but right now, he wasn’t entirely sure. 

“You coming, or what?” Stan asked. 

Ford let out a heavy sigh, before he walked to catch up with his brother. He knew that his being there would only cause Fiddelford more distress, and he knew that would only make his guilty, nauseous black stain grow, wild and unchecked like a weed. But he couldn’t say no. 

He’d lost Fiddleford once. The least he could do was try to salvage what was left.

\-----------------

Fiddleford…yes, that was his name…he remembered now…

Fiddleford was beginning to like this Helen woman. As they drove along the winding road, he inched a bit closer to her, feeling the warmth of her. 

She was comforting. She was safe. Even though she called herself a friend of the two men that frightened him more than anything, she felt removed from them. She hadn’t been a part of what happened in that godforsaken house. 

Fiddleford had long since stopped trembling, ever since Helen had dug a sweater out of a nearby dresser in the dangerous man’s bedroom. It was far too large for him, meant for a frame with broad shoulders and thick arms, a strong chest and a fuller stomach, but Fiddleford didn’t mind. Helen had muttered it didn’t have to look fancy anyway. Just something to protect him from the biting wind of winter. 

The car was quiet, and rocked him gently like a baby in a cradle. Combined with the heat that radiated from Helen’s nearby body, he almost felt like taking a nap. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d so willingly wanted to sleep, when the nightmares felt so very far away. Even with the dangerous man and his strange doppelganger sitting less than a foot away from him in the front of the car, he felt so at ease that he could have just slept forever.

Then the dangerous man glanced over his shoulder, and stared at him, alerting Fiddleford back into wakefulness. Those eyes sent a chill through him that made him want to curl up and weep for the rest of his life. He recalled that lurch of distress when he’d first awoken back in that awful house, and looked directly into those eyes. The primal fear that ordered him to run, hide, put as much distance between him and this threat as he could. Those eyes held for him memories that not even the device seemed to be able to seal off. 

He almost turned away from them again, holding back every urge to whimper like a frightened child.

But then…it was so odd…when he looked into the dangerous man’s eyes this time…they were so sad. So lost. He found that he couldn’t look away. And so he stared back.

_“You mean to tell me you’ve never had pizza before in your life? That’s crazy! What do you eat in Tennessee if you didn’t have pizza?”_

_An explosion of a flavor he’d never before experienced in his life spreading across his tongue. A spicy, savory smell wafting under his nose. Whatever he’d bitten into was hot, burning the roof of his mouth a bit. But he didn’t care. It was delicious._

_“I told you to let it cool down before you bit into it.” The voice was different, feminine, but gravely and smarmy. “Redneck nerd’s gonna be bitchin’ about a sore mouth tomorrow…”_

Fiddleford blinked a few times as the memory abruptly ended. He reached up and readjusted his glasses, which had begun to slip off his nose. He wished he could summon it back. It’d been one of the clearest things he’d seen in…oh, the longest time. He needed more. He needed something to hold on to. 

He flicked his gaze back up to the dangerous man, who now did not seem so dangerous. He wanted to ask him so many questions. But where to even begin? He didn’t get the chance, however, as the hospital loomed into view, and the doppelganger eased the car into a parking spot. 

“We’re here,” Helen said cheerfully. She gave his arm a comforting squeeze, drawing Fiddleford out of the haze of his memory. “We’re gonna get you all fixed up,” Helen added. She sounded like she were talking to a child, something he’d never really heard from a doctor (not that there’d been any lady doctors back home for him to compare her to). Fiddelford tried not to hold it against her. He’d already guessed, by the shape of her body and the careworn lines etched in her face, that she was a mother herself, and the tone just came naturally. 

They exited the car, and Fiddelford immediately braced himself against the cold. The doppelganger had provided him with a jacket - a worn red one with a fleece hood - and Fiddelford buried himself in it now, marveling to himself that, after all those nights sitting out in the snow and harsh wind, a few hours in a warmed house was all it took for him to forget what real cold felt like. Even so, he pulled his hands into the sleeves of the sweater, scrunching up the armholes in his fists to keep out the wind. 

The hospital was small, much like the one they’d had back home. Fiddleford smiled as he remembered that, and how he’d been rather amazed when he moved to Palo Alto and saw a big city hospital for the first time, rising above the other buildings with its multiple stories. Every floor had been for something different - floor one for ICU, floor two for surgery, floor three for pediatrics…which he seemed to recall spending some time on a few years ago. Pacing a rut into the floor. Waiting for news. The shrill first cries of a newborn rang in his ears and he didn’t know why, but it brought a sense of warmth to him that almost seemed to drive out the February cold. 

They walked through the front door of the hospital, with it’s one story and long hallways. Yellow arrows lined the floor, jutting off in different directions. ICU to the left, ER to the right, doctors offices straight down the hall. They happened upon a welcome desk, manned by a pudgy, grandmotherly woman. She sat erect, typing away at a typewriter. 

As they approached, she raised her head, looking over the wire frame of her glasses. “Why Helen Bergstrum,” she said, her wrinkled lips curving into a smile. “What on earth are you doing here, on your day off no less.”

“Hi, Louise,” Helen said, returning the smile. “Ed isn’t busy, is he? We’ve got a patient he needs to see. Tell him it’ll…interest him.” She titled her head in Fiddleford’s direction. He felt like a specimen under microscope glass.

Louise arched her eyebrow, and said, “Well, that’s a little cryptic. I’ll give Ed a buzz. There haven’t been many patients to see him today, thank the lord, but you know that man. Leaves all his paperwork until the last minute, then takes all day to do it, snapping at anyone who disturbs him. I swear, he’s the most disorganized man I’ve met since, well, my husband.” She chuckled at her own joke. Helen gave a polite chuckle herself. 

As Louise tottered away to perform her duty, Fiddleford heard the dangerous man mutter, “Where was she the night Stan and I were here? I would much rather have dealt with her.”

“Louise only works days,” Helen replied. Fiddleford could hear the smile creep into her voice. “At night, Sharon takes her place. Sharon isn’t exactly what you’d classify as a people person. How she still has a job here is beyond me.”

At that moment, Louise tottered back to her desk, and eased herself back into her chair the way only a woman with arthritis of the knees could. “Ed told me to tell you to come right on in,” she said brightly. “Hasn’t had a patient all day, and he needs the excitement.”

“Thanks,” Helen said, and steered the group down the hall, following the arrow that lead to the doctor’s offices. 

Fiddelford couldn’t help but look around as they walked, even though there wasn’t much to see but a bunch of closed doors. Many of them were darkened, and many of them didn’t even have placards indicating who they belonged to. Yep, Fiddleford thought, this was exactly like home. 

They reached a door near the end of the hall. The placard on the wall read: “Dr. Edward Matthews, M.D.”

Helen didn’t even bother to knock, simply turning the knob and opening the door. Fiddleford looked inside, and saw a white-haired man, probably in his mid-sixities, look up from a daunting stack of paperwork on his desk. He smiled at them, a bristly mustache that matched his hair tweaking up with his lip. “Hello, Helen,” he said, his voice jovial and kind. It made Fiddleford think of Santa Claus. “Louise said you’d make this worth my while. I figured it must be pretty dern interesting if you’re willing to come in on your day off when your kids are out of town.” He laughed a bit at his own joke, then stood, stretching exaggeratedly, showing off a slight paunch.

“I think so,” Helen said. She looked over at Fiddleford, motioning him to come forward. He did, very cautiously. Ed Matthews may have looked like anyone’s grandfather, but Fiddleford still had an uneasy feeling in his gut as he approached. “This is Fiddleford McGucket,” Helen said. She moved a bit towards Fiddelford as she spoke, as if attempting to protect him. Fiddleford was grateful for that. “He’s displaying symptoms similar to that case you told me about back in November. Remember? The one with the eye?”

The smile slowly dripped off Dr. Matthews’ face, his mustache dropping a bit. “Yes, I remember that,” he muttered. “It’s sad, what happened to that girl. I’ve known her family since her parents were babies. She had so much promise.”

Fiddleford watched Dr. Matthews’ face glaze over, regret etched in every wrinkled line. A twinge of recognition stirred in him. There was something in his mind about a young girl. The memory had fear attached to it, but there was also a sense of relief. Like he was helping her…but as soon as he made an attempt to focus in on the memory, decipher what it could possibly mean, it vanished, like a wisp of smoke blown out an open window. He let out a silent, frustrated sigh.

Dr. Matthews seemed to suddenly recall there were others in the room with him. He shook his head slightly, and said, “Yes, that was a strange one. Actually, Helen, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it.” Dr. Matthews reached down and opened a drawer on his desk, fishing around for something, his mustache screwed up in determination.

“What do you mean?” Helen asked. 

Dr. Matthews pulled a small sheet of paper out of his drawer, and studied it for a few moments. He then let out a heavy sigh, and said, “There was another one.”

Shock seemed to ripple through Helen, the dangerous man, and the doppleganger. Three sets of eyes went wide in surprise. Fiddleford wondered what they looked so concerned about. 

“What do you mean, another one?” Helen asked. Her voice almost cracked.

“I mean another person came in with the exact same symptoms, last night,” Dr. Matthews replied. He walked around his desk, the paper still clutched tightly in his hand. “An elderly man, this time.” He cast a look at Fiddleford and the two other men. “I can’t give you his name, Hippocratic oath and all that, but I can tell you that he was erratic and confused, just like that girl.” He turned his attention back to Helen. “His son brought him in. He thought that maybe it was just dementia setting in, brought on by old age. And I agreed with him, at first. I mean, I know dementia doesn’t usually come on that strong or that suddenly, but when the son told me he found the old man standing in their front lawn, muttering about seeing something in the woods, I didn’t really think it could be anything but that. But then he said exactly what she said.”

“’My mind is clear’,” Helen muttered. 

“Yeah, that’s it,” Dr. Matthews replied, nodding a bit. “I didn’t think much of it at the time. I didn’t want to think that maybe they were connected. After all, what happened to that girl happened all those months ago. But when his son was folding up his father’s clothes, this fell out of his pants’ pocket.” Dr. Matthews handed Helen the sheet of paper. Fiddelford caught a glimpse of it. A red eye stared back at him, crossed out with an x. 

He felt his heart fall to his stomach, and a gasp managed to escape from between his lips. Everyone turned to stare at him, and he felt their gazes on him but he could not meet them. He could not tear his gaze away from that eye.

_What is it you have seen?_

_All will soon be well._

_It is forgotten._

_My mind is clear…_

He found he could not breathe. His lungs were imploding, and his legs wobbled beneath him. 

Helen and Dr. Matthews seemed to notice his distress. She gently gripped his arm, and Dr. Matthews grabbed a nearby chair, bringing it closer for Fiddleford to sit down. As he did, he caught a glimpse of the dangerous man, staring down at him, pity in his eyes. For some reason, a shot of warmth spread through Fiddleford. It eased the tension in his lungs ever so slightly.

“You see what I mean,” Helen asked, turning to Dr. Matthews. “We found that symbol on him too, and he’s showing the exact same signs of memory loss. And he’s doing way worse than the others, Ed. He’s been out on the streets for at least four months. He’s got a badly healed Colles fracture, and who knows what else. That’s why we brought him here. We knew if there was anyone who understood this case, it’d be you.”

Dr. Matthews was looking at Fiddleford, the wheels in his mind obviously turning. Fiddleford gazed back, practically seeing the unpleasant memories dance across the old man’s face. A small, quiet part of him wanted to take those memories away, so they wouldn’t bother this poor, kind soul anymore, so he could get on with his life and continue to help those that needed him. 

Fiddleford wondered where that small, quiet part came from. 

Finally, Dr. Matthews sighed, and said, “Alright, we’ll start with the wrist, then we can run an MRI and a CAT scan, if necessary. You already asked him the Alzheimer’s battery, I take it.”

“Yeah, and he seems pretty coherent in that regard. I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with.”

As the two doctors continued to discuss treatment, Fiddleford let his gaze wander back to the dangerous man. He really wasn’t even sure he could call the man dangerous anymore. 

As his mind worked hard and painfully, dredging about for memories of this man, he felt something emerge. Something solid and concrete. A name. Thirteen simple letters. Words that had followed him through years, close to his heart and in his mind. A friendly presence and a kindred spirited, until something had happened to make that all come crashing down.

Stanford Pines.

The man who’d ruined his life.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief violence, blood, and allusions to rape in this chapter, guys! Just a heads up.

“If you must keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”  
\- George Orwell, 1984

\-----------------------------

Stan watched from his waiting room chair as the sun sank below the tree line. He glanced up at the clock on the wall - 4:47 pm. Even though it was February, he still couldn’t get used to the whole “dark by five” thing winter brought with it. Maybe it was holdover from his days on the street, but he’d learned that the night generally didn’t bring anything pleasant. Give him the summer with its sweltering heat and unbearable humidity any time. At least then, you had daylight. Daylight was safer.

He shifted in his seat, hating these hard plastic chairs with every fiber of his being. They’d been here for four hours, while Fidds underwent every test Dr. Matthews could think up. Helen had at least had the luxury of being called on every once in a while by Dr. Matthews for help setting up a test, or to be there when he reset Fidds’ broken wrist so they poor guy wouldn’t freak out. 

Meanwhile, he and Ford were exiled out here. It was something Ford grumbled about every chance he could. His twelve Ph.D’s were his favorite topic to bring up. None of them were actually in medicine (as Stan had helpfully pointed out a grand total of once; he learned quickly to never mention it again when Ford shot him a look that could have been the equivalent of a knife to the heart), but that did nothing to curb Ford’s bellyaching.

Stan knew his brother was upset about his friend. He knew Ford felt responsible for Fidds’ accident, and wanted to make it up to him. But goddamn, did he have to act like a cranky five year old that wasn’t getting his way?

Stan had long ago stopped trying to get Ford to calm down in any way. He brushed off conversation, he didn’t want snacks or coffee, he refused to set foot outside the hospital for a breath of air that wasn’t highly sanitized. All he wanted to do was pace and fret and complain. For four hours. 

It was really starting to get on Stan’s nerves. 

“She’s been gone for thirty minutes,” Ford muttered. “How long does it take to run a simple CAT scan?”

“I dunno,” Stan said, sighing and lounging back in his seat. He was starting to get antsy. Ford’s crankiness must have been rubbing off on him, because he added, “Maybe you should just sit down and let the actual doctors do their jobs.”

“Excuse me,” Ford said. He stopped pacing and gave Stan a withering glare. 

Stan half-heartedly tried to backpedal. The last thing he wanted to put up with right now was an argument. He just didn’t have the energy. “Look,” he said, “you haven’t stopped moving since we got here, and you keep griping about how long it’s taking and how you should be helping and how you obviously know more than they know. You need to calm down, Sixer, and let Helen and Doc Matthews do their jobs. You getting all pissy is not helping anyone.”

“I am not ‘pissy’, as you so elegantly put it,” Ford snapped back. “I complain about how long its taking because it is taking too long.”

“Okay, then, genius,” Stan said. “How long should it be taking?” He vaguely wondered why he was pursuing this, pushing Ford’s buttons, like when they were kids, and Stan would pester his brother until he got some kind of rise out of him, just to be a pisser, because he was ten and that’s what ten-year-olds did. 

Ford didn’t answer him right away, but the look of impotent anger never left his face. Finally, he barked, “I don’t know exactly, but I do know it’s not supposed to take this long.”

Stan rolled his eyes, and said, “Why don’t you just admit you have no idea, and you’re just being impatient?”

“I am not,” Ford protested. Stan could see his ears were turning red. He quickly said, “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to take this a little more seriously. I know you couldn’t care less because you don’t even know him, but -”

“Hey,” Stan snapped, sitting up in his chair a little straighter. “Just because I don’t know him doesn’t mean I don’t care. And I am taking this seriously. I’m just trying not to get all worked up about it, unlike somebody, because I know that that’s not gonna help anything in the long run. You’d think you would have figured that out by now.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean,” Ford asked. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one,” Stan asked. He stood up, making his angry gaze level with Ford. He had the eeriest sense of déjà vu. “I thought I practically spelled it out for you the last time you shoved your head up your ass.”

“This is nothing like last time, and you know it,” Ford practically growled. “This isn’t me jumping to conclusions, Stan. This is me worrying about my friend and wanting to help.”

“You ain’t helping by saying Helen isn’t any good at her damn job!”

“I never once said that!”

“No, sorry, my mistake, you’ve been saying that you’re just better at it than she is. Because you’re just so smart and no one could ever compete, right?”

“I haven’t said that either! Now you’re just putting words in my mouth, for whatever childish reason.”

Someone cleared their throat, dragging the brothers from their argument. They turned and saw Helen standing there, her arms folded across her chest. Stan actually felt kind of guilty as she stared at them from over the rims of her glasses. 

“Problem?” she asked sarcastically. 

“No,” Ford answered tersely before Stan could even open his mouth. Stan could see that he was trying very hard to put himself back together. He even laced his hands behind his back, trying to appear like an astute, objective observer. Stan wanted to roll his eyes again. “What’s going on?” Ford asked.

Helen kept her arms folded across her chest, her eyes darting up and down Ford’s frame. She looked like she was trying to piece together what happened from their body language. Stan could practically see Ford wither under her gaze. Eventually, she sighed and softened her gaze. “Ed finished the CAT scan, and everything looks pretty normal. There’s obvious signs of stress on his pre-frontal lobe and hippocampus, but no actual damage or anything.”

“His what?” Stan asked.

“The pre-frontal lobe and hippocampus are two parts of the brain involved in short- and long-term memory, respectively,” Ford rattled off. Stan could have punched the smug look that followed off his face. It practically sneered, _I am a smart guy._

“Exactly,” Helen said. “And when they’re damaged, like through injury or disease, it impairs memory creation and recall. But it’s so weird because his symptoms are all over the place, and there’s no significant damage. It’s almost like his brain just…doesn’t have certain memories anymore, or they’re hidden away somehow. Neither Ed or I are sure what could be causing it.”

“So, what are we supposed to do?” Ford asked. A bit of uncertainty crept into that smug tone. 

“Well, he’s getting dressed right now. Ed says we should take him somewhere stable and safe. I think our best bet would be your place, since he doesn’t know me at all, and might feel uncomfortable in my house. We can put him up for a while, help him out, see if he gets better. If he doesn’t improve or gets worse, we can always bring him back here, and Ed can transfer him to a bigger, more well-equipped hospital in Portland.” 

Stan saw Ford deflate a little bit. It was almost enough to make Stan regret the insults he’d hurled at him a few moments earlier. He obviously really cared about McGucket, and the idea of him being transferred somewhere else, so far away, was something Ford didn’t want to hear. 

Ford shook off the look of defeat quickly enough. He merely puffed himself up again and said, “Alright, fine. He can stay in my room. I’ll take the couch.”

“Ford, are you sure that’s smart,” Stan asked. He knew his brother meant well, but at the same time, he also knew that they weren’t really the ones who should be taking care of a mentally unbalanced man. “Maybe it’d just be better -”

“Of course I’m sure,” Ford said, cutting him off. He didn’t look Stan in the eye. “He’s my friend, and I’m going to take care of him.”

“In that case, I think I’ll stick around and help you,” Helen said. “At least for tonight. It’d probably be for the best if you had someone with medical training around to help you.” She looked over at Stan, and asked, “After we drop Ford and Fiddleford back off at the house, would you mind driving me back to my place to get some clothes and stuff?”

“Yeah, sure,” Stan grumbled. Great. So now not only was his input no longer valued, but he was reduced to a taxi service. Lovely. 

“Thanks,” Helen said. She flashed him a sympathetic smile before adding, “I’m gonna go say goodbye to Ed and collect our new guest. I’ll be right back.”

She turned away and headed back down the hall, towards Dr. Matthews’ office. Stan glanced over at his brother. Ford was staring off after Helen, pointedly not looking in Stan’s direction, even though he’d have to have been blind not to notice Stan staring right at him.

This was going to be a great evening. Stan could tell already.

\--------------------------

Even though it was dark in the car, Fiddleford could feel Stanford by his side, sitting close. To his everlasting amazement, having him so close didn’t fill him with dread as it had before. 

He found himself once again dredging through his mind, looking specifically for memories involving Stanford Pines. He was slightly amazed at what he managed to recall. 

The odd thing was that there were many other memories he managed to dig up involving him. Not just the pizza memory either.

Sitting across from him, playing Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons. 

Laying awake at two in the morning in a small dorm room, talking about where home was for them. He seemed to recall the formerly-dangerous man mentioning the East coast, by a beach, his family spread far and wide, a direct contrast to the close-knit, middle-of-nowhere home Fiddleford was beginning to recall.

Pouring over scientific data as they ate a light dinner together, a happy memory in the very house that had once filled Fiddleford with an enormous dread. 

And then there was that nagging thought of _ruined my life, he’s to blame, it’s all his fault._

That frightened Fiddleford more than anything. 

It was more than he’d ever remembered about anyone that seemed important to him. He supposed it was because Stanford was here, next to him, real and tangible. It made remembering easier to have someone to focus on.

Still, while the memories trickled forth easily, they held very little weight to them. It was like they belonged to someone else, or were playing out like a movie, staring actors he didn’t recognize, in a language he only understood a little bit. But the fact the memories were coming at all gave him reason to hope. He thought, maybe, sitting down with Stanford and talking might jog some more. After all, looking at a photograph wasn’t enough to actually understood what happened there. The more you looked at it, the less you knew.

He focused his thoughts on the questions he’d ask Stanford once they were back at the house, to hear more about the bits of film in his head, that needed to be put together to form a complete picture. It certainly helped to take his mind off the near-palpable tension that made the car feel so very, very small. 

When they’d left the hospital (Fiddleford with his wrist bound up in a bright blue cast), Stanford had slid into the backseat with him without saying a word. Helen watched them cautiously over her shoulder, as if waiting for any kind of explosive reaction, was quickly met with nothing, shrugged her shoulders, and slid into the front passenger seat. Next to her, the doppelganger refused to look behind him, except when they first pulled out of the parking lot. He’d simply stared ahead, expression unreadable. 

Fiddelford had tried many times to try and figure out who this doppelganger was. He was the spitting image of Stanford. They could have been twins. Did Stanford have a twin? Did he even have any siblings? He tried to remember a time when they would have talked about family, parents and siblings and pets, but there were no clear pictures in his mind. He pressed his lips into a hard line. He hoped that wasn’t a sign he was losing his grip on Stanford again. He didn’t think he could handle losing his first solid memory in months. 

Outside, the sentry-like pines of the forest rushed past the car, blended together by the speed, to the point where they looked like a giant wall, protecting this disused path from intruders. Fiddleford shifted his gaze over to Stanford, expecting to meet those bespectacled eyes once more, but Stanford’s attention was on the passing trees. His face was an odd mixture of deep concentration and boundless curiosity, the kind of look you see in a child, fascinated by the world around him. Something inside Fiddleford stirred again, seeing that look. He seemed to recall it many times when he was at the house with Stanford, before whatever happened to drive him away happened. 

Although nothing specific came to mind, the memory made him smile.

The trees suddenly parted, and they came upon the darkened cabin. The doppelganger pulled the car up next to a dark blue Buick and shut off the engine. He and Helen opened their doors, and Helen came back to open Fiddleford’s for him. She offered him a sweet smile, which Fiddleford gladly returned. He didn’t understand how, since he had no memories of her until today, but she managed to stir some remembrance in him as well. Something about her just seemed…like home.

They walked up to the house, and immediately, Fiddleford heard whining and scratching at the door. Before he could ask what the noise was, the doppelganger unlocked and opened the front door, and out came a running dog. The porch was only dimly lit by a flickering light, but Fiddleford could see it was a young dog, maybe a month or two, mostly brown with a black sploch on its back. And it seemed very happy that the doppelganger was there. It jumped up on its hind legs, licking the doppleganger’s hands and face, whining desperately for attention. 

For the first time since they left the hospital, the doppelganger smiled, and gave the dog some vigorous pets. “Hey, Rip,” he said affectionately, rubbing the dog’s head, being sure to give it a good scratch behind the ears. “Sorry we left you for so long, sweetheart.”

The dog seemed to accept the apology, and gave the doppelganger another slobbery lick. It was then that its attention was drawn to Fiddleford, the obvious new person in the group. It stared at him intensely for roughly half a minute before leaping down from the doppelganger’s embrace and bounding over to Fiddleford, sniffing at his foreign shoes and clothes and inspecting him thoroughly. 

Fiddleford let the dog sniff him for as long as it wished, making no further attempts to interact with it. It wasn’t that it seemed particularly mean or overbearing, it was just that, at the moment he wasn’t really sure what his stance on dogs had been. There seemed to be memories of dogs bouncing around in his head, but he couldn’t quite get a grasp on them. For the time being, he’d just let it do what it wanted.

“Alright, Ripley, that’s enough,” Stanford eventually muttered. He gently grabbed the dog by its collar and tugged it away. “I’m sure Fiddleford doesn’t want you invading his personal space all night long. Now, go do your thing.”

The dog suddenly seemed to remember that it was outside, and bounded off into the yard before it, sniffing and occasionally rubbing its face against the cold ground, seemingly for no other reason that just because. 

Stanford offered him a small smile, and said, “Sorry about her. She gets excited when she meets new people.”

“You should have seen her when she first got here,” Helen chimed in from in front of them as she followed the doppelganger into the house. “She was so happy to see me she peed on my shoes.”

“Hey, we said we were sorry,” Fiddleford heard the doppelganger call out from inside. He and Stanford began to climb up the porch as a cold wind picked up. He was grateful that they were inside quickly. The small cabin may have harbored nightmarish memories that he didn’t fully understand, but at least it was well-heated.

“I know,” Helen said, laughing a bit. “I can’t hold anything against that cutie. And I think she knows it.”

Fiddleford felt a gentle warmth pass through him. These playful conversations put him at ease, made him feel like he was a part of something. It was strangely comforting, being involved with people who genuinely seemed to care. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this way. He wanted to keep it forever.

“Well, I guess you better go get your overnight stuff, Helen,” Stanford said, lacing his hands around behind him, standing up a bit straighter. “Stanley, weren’t you going to take her?”

It was as if someone had cut off the heat to the room entirely. The doppelganger - Stanley, Fiddleford now supposed he should call him - gave Stanford a strange look, something Fiddleford almost thought looked like sadness. But he couldn’t be sure. The look faded to indifference in moments as Stanley said, “Yeah, yeah, just wait for my dog to come back in, will ya?”

“I can let her back in,” Stanford said, irritation creeping into his voice. “Now go on, Helen needs her stuff.”

“You sure he’s gonna be okay with you,” Stanley said, jamming a thumb in Fiddleford’s direction. “Last I checked, he wasn’t your biggest fan.”

Fiddleford saw Stanford’s ears turn slightly red. 

Helen took that opportunity to intersect herself between the two men, and addressed Fiddleford, “Do you feel okay staying here with Ford? We shouldn’t be gone too long.”

Fiddleford flicked a glance in Stanford’s direction. The feeling of excitement rushed through him as he thought about all this man might help him uncover. He had to know. So he nodded silently. 

Helen smiled nervously. “Alright, Stan, let’s go ahead and head out. I don’t want my neighbors to freak out and call the police if they realize I haven’t been at my house all day. The last time I was gone all day, old Ms. Crampton thought I had been abducted the Yates’ gardener,” She tried to play this off with a laugh, but it was shaky and forced. She instead grabbed gently at Stanley’s arm and steered him towards the door. The awkward silence was thick enough to cut with a knife, well after they had left the room entirely, and didn’t dissipate at all until the front door clicked behind them.

Fiddleford and Stanford were left alone, staring at each other. 

Stanford still stood with his arms behind his back, looking him over like some kind of specimen, but it was obvious to tell he was practically vibrating with what Fiddleford could only assume was excitement. Stanford tapped his foot a few times, then let out a long, overly dramatic sigh. 

This was Fiddleford’s chance. He could finally get some information, finally piece together this information that was swirling around in his head. 

“So,” Stanford finally said, “would you like some tea?”

“I suppose,” Fiddleford answered. He didn’t really know what else to say. He realized, as much as he’d been looking forward to talking to Stanford and getting some answers, he hadn’t really prepared himself for what he’d do when this moment came. Despite the hurricane of questions that had rattled about in his mind in the car, now, he drew a big, fat blank, and simply followed behind Stanford in a daze towards the kitchen. 

The kitchen was small and unimpressive, slightly dirty, fairly screaming single man. He supposed that he shouldn’t have really expected more. “You can sit down if you want,” Stanford said, opening a cupboard and taking down a battered silver tea kettle. He filled it with water from the sink as Fiddleford gingerly sat down at the table, the formica slightly sticky under his hands. 

Stanford set the kettle on the stove and turned on the heat, and turned back to Fiddleford. Fiddleford was nearly knocked back by the overwhelming guilt that radiated from him. Could that all be for Fiddleford? Or was he just guilty that the table was sticky. Fiddleford decided that he’d had enough of this guesswork. He was going to get some answers. “Stanford Pines,” he said simply, slightly embarrassed by how small and shy his voice was. “I remember you.”

Stanford looked like someone had just plunked solid gold in his lap. His face lit up with a smile, but Fiddleford kept going. “But I don’t remember everything. I think you being here has jogged some stuff…but nothing sticks. Not even really why I left.”

The overwhelming guilt was back. Fiddleford was amazed that Stanford showed his emotions so keenly. It was like reading an open book.

“I want you to help me,” Fiddleford continued. He needed Stanford to stop looking at him that way. “Like I said, nothing’s sticking. I figure I could ask you some questions, and you’d be able to tell me.”

“Alright,” Stanford said. He walked over slowly to the table and sat down in the chair opposite Fiddleford. “Where should we start?”

“How did I meet you?”

“At college. We were roommates at Backupsmore University. You were a mechanical engineering major, with a minor in robotic studies.”

“What about you?”

Stanford laughed a little, a faint smile flashing across his face. “I was too wide-eyed and excited to settle on anything until my junior year. I just wanted to do everything. But I eventually settled on physics.” He paused, and then sheepishly added, “At least, for my first Ph. D.”

“Your first?”

“Yeah…I have eleven others.” Was Stanford blushing? Somehow, to Fiddleford, that seemed out of character. 

He said nothing about it though, merely smiled a bit and let out a low whistle. “Gosh dern,” he said. “I can’t imagine how I kept up with you.”

“Hey, don’t sell yourself short,” Stanford said. “You were one of the smartest people I knew. You made robotics blueprints to relax. And I remember the first time I ever even spoke to you.” He interrupted himself with another chuckle and said, “We were only sort of friendly for the first few weeks. We had a couple classes together, and were decent enough roommates to each other. One night, I was doing some calculus homework, and you walked behind me and told me I’d gotten one of the problems wrong. You even pointed out where in the equation I’d messed up. I didn’t listen to you, because hey, I was a fat-headed freshman who thought he was Tesla reincarnated.”

Fiddleford snorted a laugh. Stanford smiled, seeming very pleased to hear it. “Anyway,” he continued, “when the professor passed back the assignments, I’d gotten one question wrong - the one you told me about. I wanted to throttle you for days for being smarter than me.” 

Fiddelford laughed again, and said, “I seem to recall something like that. I was just laying in bed one day, reading a book, and you come storming in with a huge scowl on your face. I asked you what was wrong, and you just looked at me like you wanted to murder me.”

“Yeah, that was because of calculus,” Stanford said, his smile broadening even more. 

“Well, it’s nice to know not even the evils of calculus could destroy our friendship.”

“We started hanging out a lot more after that,” Stanford continued. “We’d talk a lot more, not just usual pleasantries either. I remember staying up until at least three, just shooting the shit.”

“Did I ever tell you anything about myself?”

“Oh yeah, all the time.”

“Where am I from?”

“You don’t even remember that,” Stanford asked, his face once again slack with guilt.

“Not really,” Fiddleford said, trying not to let on how uncomfortable that guilt made him. As if he didn’t feel bad enough about not remembering something as basic as his early life. “Like I said, I get bits and pieces, but nothing really solid. One of the biggest things I remember is a woman called Nana.”

Stanford nodded and smiled a bit, although he guilt was still there. “She was your grandmother,” he said. “You were pretty fond of her. You wrote back and forth constantly, at least once a week. And she sent us cookies a lot through the mail. Best damn chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had.” He smiled again.

As if through some sort of strange magic, Fiddleford could practically taste a rich and chocolatey mass melting on his tongue. “What else did I tell you,” he asked, pushing aside his sudden urge for cookies.

“Well, you were from Tennessee, a little town, barely even had five hundred people in it. I think it was called Blue Bell or Belt Buckle or something…”

“Bell Buckle,” Fiddleford said quietly. It amazed him how well it rolled off his tongue. This was almost too easy. “I had to bike over to the next town just to go to the library.” He remembered his favorite time was the summer, because he had all the time in the world to do that. Even though it was hot and humid, it was worth it for a new stack of books.

“And you told me you had a tree house, one you built yourself, ” Stanford added, his face lighting up. “You’d hide from your brothers there, because they were all older and stronger than you and their favorite pastime was knocking you around.”

Fiddleford leaned on his elbows on the table and said, “Yeah. I had six older brothers, and one older sister. And she pretended like she was actually Dolly Parton’s child that had been stolen by gypsies anyway, so she wasn’t much better.”

Stanford replied, “Yeah, I remember you mentioning her, and how…popular she was.” He waved his hands in the area around his chest, and Fiddleford nearly choked on his laugh. 

“It helped that she’d change clothes when we got to school, and back again before we went home,” he said. “From the dresses Momma made her leave the house in, to bellbottoms and t-shirts that showed off everything. And I do mean everything.”

The tea kettle whistled, drowning out their laughter. As Stanford got up to take it off, Fiddleford said, “It certainly sounds like college was a godsend for me.”

“We did have a pretty good time there,” Stanford replied. He reached into another cabinet and pulled out two mugs. They didn’t match. He reached over into a canister shoved against the wall and pull out two squashed teabags, and put one in each glass. Steam fogged up his glasses a bit as he poured the hot water. 

Another memory popped into Fiddleford’s head. He, Stanford, and that girl from the time they got pizza…they had just come in from the quad, into a warm building, perhaps their dorm building, perhaps elsewhere, but Ford’s glasses had fogged up in a similar manner as soon as they were being blasted on all sides from the thundering heater.

“Did either of us have a girlfriend?” Fiddleford asked. 

“No,” Stanford said simply. “I think we both were a bit too shy for that sort of thing. At least, I was. Every time I talked to a girl, I ended up getting laughed at anyway. I think I eventually stopped trying.” He came over with a mug in each hand. He handed Fiddleford one, emblazoned with a picture of Woody Woodpecker. Fiddleford wrapped his hands around the mug. The heat was very soothing.

“I seem to keep remembering a girl,” Fiddleford said after a bit. “She was a brunette, tall, a little gangly. Dressed in black a lot. Always smirking and making sarcastic little jokes…”

“Oh, that was Anita,” Stanford interjected. “When you remember more about her, I think you’ll also remember why she wasn’t girlfriend material.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one, the two of you got into arguments all the time. We liked hanging out with her, to be sure, but she was always doing something that made you upset. I think she mostly just liked getting a rise out of you. She wasn’t exactly…a morally upright citizen, I guess.” Stanford played with the string of his teabag for a moment, lost in thought. Then he said, “I remember one time, she tried to convince us to help her steal a parking meter.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Completely. She never actually gave us a reason for wanting to steal it. She mostly just thought it would be fun to try.”

“We…we didn’t actually help her, did we?”

“No, you both got into an argument about how stealing is wrong, and she called you an uptight hillbilly and said she’d do it without us. Then when we got back to the dorm, you guys got into another argument because she was sitting on my bed, reading a magazine, wearing one of your sweaters, drinking a beer, and over in the corner was a parking meter. A circle of concrete was even still attached to the bottom.”

Fiddleford laughed again, running a hand down his face, “Good lord…” he muttered.

“And then, when we asked her how she managed to pull it off by herself, she wouldn’t tell us. She said if we’d helped her, we’d know.”

“Alright, I’m starting to see what you mean by ‘not girlfriend material’,” Fiddleford said. 

A soft whined echoed from the front door, and Stanford stood up from his chair. “Just a second,” he said. “She’ll start barking like crazy if I ignore her.”

Stanford walked out of the kitchen, and Fiddleford heard the door open, and the furious clacking of puppy nails on hardwood as the dog came bounding in. “Ripley, will you calm down,” he heard Stanford mutter. Suddenly, in a blur of brown, the dog came running into the kitchen and, upon seeing the same stranger from before, ran over and began to sniff him anew. She was particularly interested in his cast, now that it was at a level she could reach, and she nearly stuck her nose in it. Fiddleford laughed a bit and let her.

“Ripley, will you leave him alone,” Stanford said from the doorway. 

“No, it’s alright,” Fiddleford said. He raised a tentative hand and gave Ripley a few pets on the back. This seemed to catch Ripley’s attention enough to stop her sniffing, and she practically turned to goo under his hand. Fiddleford couldn’t help but laugh as he said, “You’re just a little sweetie pie, aren’t you? Not used to this weird little pipe cleaner with glasses, are you?”

He noticed Stanford watching them worriedly, and Fiddleford said, “I’m starting to think that I like dogs. She makes me think I had a few when I was growing up.”

“You did tell me your parents owned a farm,” Ford said, taking his seat again. “And that you loved naming the animals. Every time there was a litter of kittens in the barn, or a new foal or calf, you wanted to name it.”

Fond memories of the farm, the animals, came trickling back to him. He remembered warm grass under bare feet, the low of cattle, the buzzing of summer insects. Smells of soil and his grandmother’s flower bed. 

“I really appreciate this, Stanford,” he said quietly. “It really does help.”

“Not a problem,” Stanford replied, his face lighting up in a smile. “Anything for my friend.”

Fiddleford took a sip of his tea. It streamed down his throat, hot and soothing. He let out a quiet, contented sigh, and just let this all soak in. This felt right and good, being here, with a man who called himself his friend, and an affectionate dog at his feet. He remembered this man, and the good times they’d spent together. There were still gaps they needed to fill, but they had all the time in the world now.

He looked up from his mug, and saw that Stanford was staring at him strangely. He was still smiling, but there was something so sad about it now. The guilt was there once again, but also hints of fear, regret, perhaps even some physical pain. The emotions danced across Stanford’s face so subtly, it was very hard to pin them down.

“What’s the matter?” Fiddleford asked. 

Stanford lowered his gaze a bit, a hesitant shyness marring his features. He swallowed thickly, and said, “I was…I’ve been meaning to ask you what you remember about the house.”

Fiddleford felt a sharp coldness jolt down his spine. Flashes of color, blindingly bright, obstructed his vision for a second before fading. His ears rang with shrill and ungodly sounds he could not identify. 

Stanford took his silence as a cue to continue. “I thought maybe it might help us help you, if we could talk about that day, the things that lead up to it, together. Helen and Stan don’t really know about it. I’ve only told them there was an accident, and that you left for health reasons, but we both know that’s not all there is to it. We need to be honest with them if we expect to get anywhere.”

“And what makes you think I want to remember that anyway?” The acidic words left Fiddleford’s mouth before he had a chance to think them over, maybe resolve to speak in a gentler tone. He and Stanford had been getting on so well, reminiscing, and from the way his companion’s face fell in shock, he could tell he’d struck a very raw nerve. 

But there was something inside of him, a red, flashing warning signal, telling him that this was something he should not meddle with. As if as an extra precaution, a jolt of hot agony ran from temple to temple, making it feel like his head was being slowly crushed by a vise. He let out a soft groan of pain and raised a hand to massage his forehead. He noticed it trembled slightly.

Stanford was looking at him with concern, clearly wanting to ask him if he was alright. Fiddleford did not give him the chance. “I know you wanna help me,” he said carefully, “but if whatever happened to me was bad enough to land me in this state, maybe it’s best that I don’t remember it.” Fiddleford turned his gaze down to his mug of tea, a small bit of his darkened reflection staring back at him. A man in shadow, partially obscured. 

“Fiddleford, I don’t really think that’s wise,” Stanford said. Fiddleford could hear the concern in his voice. “There are so many things you haven’t remembered yet, and having an incomplete memory might hinder your recovery.”

“I think you and I have been doing pretty good with helping me figure stuff out.”

“Well, yes, but I wasn’t around for your entire life. There are so many things you won’t be able to get from me - things about your childhood, your wife, your son -”

It was like something snapped in Fiddleford’s mind. His head shot up, sending another spider web of pain spanning through his brain, but he didn’t care. “What wife?” he asked sharply. “What son?”

“You…you don’t remember Emma and Tate at all?”

Emma and Tate…Emma and Tate…Fiddelford tried, reaching down deep into the bowels of his memory, trying to find those names, match them with faces. Then he remembered the cries of a newborn, the feeling the hospital stirred inside him. 

He’d had a son. A wife. A life of his own. 

“I have a family, and you didn’t think that was something I needed to know?” The words hissed out of Fiddleford’s mouth like flammable gas, ready to ignite from the slightest spark. 

Stanford was floundering, trying to spit out some explanation about all of this. Fury boiled into Fiddleford’s veins with every useless opening and closing of the other man’s mouth.

“I…I’m sorry,” Stanford finally managed to babble. “I just…I guess it slipped my mind.”

“Slipped your mind?” Fiddleford cried. “This isn’t a pet I had as a kid or a some stupid stunt we pulled in college, Stanford. This is my goddamn life!”

Worried thoughts began to swirl in his mind, a hurricane of questions. Did his family even know he was missing? Did they miss him? He felt like he’d been gone a long time. What if they thought he was dead? Or what if they didn’t, and his wife still waited up for him every night, his son unable to sleep because he was so worried about his father. 

“I’m sorry, Fiddleford,” Stanford repeated weakly. He looked like a man whose entire world was crumbling around him. Fiddelford wanted to scoff at him, ask what right he had to look so shaken up when he was responsible for the upheaval of Fiddleford’s very existence. The fury bubbled like a witch’s cauldron, rising in his throat like hateful bile. 

“Sorry isn’t good enough!” Fiddleford shouted. Stanford reared back like he’d physically struck him. “You took me away from a home and a family to bring me out to this godforsaken place, to this horrible house, and then you let this happen to me! You found me in an alley, and I didn’t even remember my own name! You think ‘sorry’ will make up for that?”

Stanford was shrinking back into his chair with every word. A small part of Fiddleford knew he should stop. There was no point in letting his anger get the better of him this way. But a louder, more aggressive part of him, a part he was not intimately familiar with, was railing against the injustice of it all. 

A wife.

A son.

That explained why he remembered Palo Alto and a maternity ward and the tottering steps of a child first learning to walk. He remembered a woman with soft brown hair and a hawk-like nose and almond shaped eyes , who smiled softly and liked to play with his hair while he read. She was a travel agent and liked Clark Gable. 

He remembered a swaddled bundle being slid into his arms, a tiny blue beanie poking through the top, a scrunched-up face with his nose staring back up at him.

He tried to remember the date when that bundle entered the world. He came up empty. 

He felt tears well up in his eyes. Tate. That was his boy. Emma wanted to give him her maiden name. 

He swore his heart was breaking.

Stanford, this entire time, had been watching him, his expression equal parts fear and painful regret. Fiddleford leveled his gaze at him, hot tears finally spilling over. Stanford began to raise a hand, as if in an attempt to reach across the table, take his hand, and comfort him. He instantly thought better of it and put his hand limply back down on the table. 

He scrubbed at the tears with the back of his hand, and said, voice faltering with his tears, “I…I don’t even remember his birthday.” He tried to say more, but his words were swallowed up in an agonized sob. This was worse than knowing nothing at all - knowing only a small amount, and unable to find more no matter how hard you tried, how furiously you dug in the recesses of your shattered mind. 

This time, Stanford rose from his chair completely, coming around the table to offer comfort. Fiddleford wanted none of it. He stood from his own chair and took a defensive step away from this man who claimed to be his friend. Ripley let out a surprised yip and scampered away. Her ears were settled back against her head, able to sense the tension between the two humans like the onset of a sudden and unexpected storm. 

Stanford stayed a respectful distance away, though it was easy to tell that he wanted to come closer. His eyes were misted over behind his glasses. Fiddleford watched six fingers clench uselessly by the other man’s side, desperately wishing to reach out and console and protect. 

Fiddleford would have laughed at the ridiculous idea of this man being able to protect anyone. He’d certainly done a horrible job of protecting him and the life he’d lost. 

“I can’t remember anything,” Fiddleford said. His voice sounded quiet and dangerous. It frightened him a bit. “And when I do, I can’t be sure that it’ll even stay. When I wake up tomorrow, I might not remember half of what we just talked about. I might not remember any of it.” He paused briefly to choke back a sob. He scrubbed away another torrent of hot, angry tears before continuing, “I might not remember what happened to make me this way, but I do know that you’re at the center of it all. No matter how many times I pull that trigger, I always remember you, and I always remember this house. You are the cause of this, Stanford Pines, and if trading my memories of you meant getting the rest of my life back, I’d do it.”

Stanford made no attempt to reply. He just stood there, lifeless as a statue, his eyes never leaving Fiddleford. His face was an unreadable mess of emotion. The only signs of life were the two streams of tears that ran down Stanford’s face, meeting at his chin and dripping off to the floor.

Fiddleford’s head ached something fierce. He wanted to lie down, go to sleep and never wake up again. Anything was better than standing here with the man who’d ruined everything. Without a word, he walked past Stanford, making a point to avoid touching him at all costs. He did not look back, even when he heard the other man sniffle a little, the prelude to more tears. Fiddleford could not force himself to care. If it were anyone else, his heart would have gone out to them, he would have done everything in his power to assuage their suffering. His own bleeding heart would have allowed him to do no less.

But he couldn’t make himself put forth the effort to a man who hadn’t done the same for him. All the comforting and friendliness Stanford Pines was trying to offer him no was too little, too late. 

He trudged up the stairs, to the room where he’d been set up before. He almost expected to hear Stanford’s footsteps behind him, trying to catch up, trying to explain, trying to excuse and beg forgiveness. But he didn’t. Fiddleford never even heard him move from the kitchen. He reached the upstairs hallway, walked the bedroom, and closed the door behind him. He sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled off his shoes, and folded himself beneath the covers. He pulled his knobby knees close to his chest, and wrapped himself tightly green afghan.

It seemed familiar, but he didn’t try to find it in his memories. It was too exhausting and too painful. For now, he only wanted to sleep, and then wake up anywhere but here.

As lost in his own sadness as he was, he failed to hear harried footsteps downstairs. Twelve trembling fingers searching frantically through Helen’s brown, sensible purse, that she’d left behind, only taking her house key for convenience. The jiggling of car keys to the blue Buick parked outside. 

Another sniffle and a choked sob as those same footsteps hurried out the front door, not even bothering to put on a jacket. 

The front door close quietly.

The engine of the blue Buick start up, and the wheels crunching against the dirt and rocks as it drove down Gopher Road.

\-----------------------

“So, wanna tell me what’s going on with you and Ford?” Helen’s question pierced the quiet of the car like a hot needle through unprepared skin, but she didn’t care. Stan and Ford had both been behaving strangely since they left the hospital, and now that she was alone with one of them, she intended to get to the bottom of it. 

“Not really,” Stan said. He eased his foot onto the brakes as the stoplight ahead turned yellow.

“Stan, you just obeyed traffic law and didn’t speed up to catch the yellow light. You honestly expect me to think something’s not wrong and just sit here?”

“No, I expect you to realize I don’t want to talk about it and let it go.” He eased the car to a stop, and turn his head to Helen. She could see the pleading look he gave her, even in the dark. It almost made her want to drop the subject. 

But not quite.

“You realize, as a mother, I am physically incapable of letting it go, right?”

Stan merely grumbled, “Ya know, my mom usually just let us duke it out or stew until we were tired of being mad at each other. Said that’s how men solved all their problems.”

“Pardon me if I would prefer you two to open up about your problems like adults,” Helen said. She matched his gaze with one of gentle persistence. “Will you at least tell me what the fight was about?”

Stan heaved a heavy sigh, turning his gaze away from her just as the light turned green. He accelerated and said, “Ford was being a jerk. What else is new?”

“How so?”

Stan shrugged. “All I was trying to do was get him to take a chill pill. He couldn’t sit still, and wouldn’t stop bitching about how long everything was taking. Every time Doc Matthews called you back to help him with something, I thought he was gonna pop a blood vessel or something.”

“Why?”

“He wanted to help, and was getting mad no one was asking him.”

“But Ford’s not an M.D.” Helen paused and thought for a moment, then quickly added, “Right?”

“Nope,” Stan said. “He’s got every other Ph.D. under the sun, but medicine ain’t one of them. Didn’t stop him from going on and on about how he could have helped you, and probably done everything twice as fast. I got sick of him bellyaching and coming down on you, so I told him to sit down and shut up. He didn’t handle it too well.”

“That’s utterly shocking,” Helen muttered, leaning back in her seat and folding her arms over her chest. Her head was starting to twinge in pain again. “While I appreciate you standing up for me, you really didn’t need to start an argument with your brother over my capabilities as a physician.”

“It wasn’t just that he was coming down on you, doc,“ Stan said emphatically. “It’s that he gets this way every time he gets upset - he gets mad and he starts picking on everybody. And I’m fucking tired of him doing it, because all it does is blow up in his face. And all that does is make him feel like shit.” Stan heaved another heavy sigh, all his angry steam seeming to slip out with it. “Look, I know he’s got every right to be upset about Fidds,” Stan said, gently turning the wheel down Borham Street. “What happened to that poor guy sucks, and I know Ford feels responsible for it. But he doesn’t have to act like such a monumental ass about it.”

The car halted at a stop sign for a four-way intersection. There were no other cars on the road. Stan glanced over at Helen and said, “He thinks I don’t care. He told me I didn’t even know the guy, so obviously, I don’t care at all. It’s like he doesn’t even remember what I went through before I came here. I lived what Fidds did. Maybe not in the exact same way, but I understand, probably more than Ford ever will. But you ask him, and I’m just the dumb muscle, getting in the way. Again. Just like always.”

Stan pressed the gas and turned the wheel again, to maneuver them down Pendleton Lane. They were a little over a block away from Helen’s house. She studied his face, only vaguely illuminated by the orange streetlights they passed under. Something about his expression seemed very familiar to her. Something about his voice. His tone. The look of anger and sadness mixed together, in his eyes, in the set of his mouth. And then it hit her.

“You’re jealous of him, aren’t you?” 

Stan shot an incredulous look at her. “What? I haven’t been jealous of Ford since I was nine.”

“Not him,” Helen replied. “You’re jealous of Fiddleford.”

“I am not,” Stan grumbled petulantly. 

“Stan, you have the exact same look on your face as Daisy did when I brought Scott home from the hospital. She took one look at him in his crib and asked if we could take him back, exchange him for a puppy.”

“Your kid is weird, Helen.”

“My point is that you and your brother have been apart for ten years, and things have been going pretty well for you guys, all things considered. Sure, you’ve had a few minor bumps -” 

“Like that time he accused me of being a drug addict.”

“Well, yeah,” Helen said, remembering the strange phone call she’d received from Ford that day, asking about an old anti-depressant and where one could be obtained. She’d spent the rest of the day panicked that one of the Pines brothers was or was going to become a drug addict, only to have her fears put to rest the next day with a phone call from a now very sheepish Ford saying false alarm, forget he even mentioned anything.

“But other than things like that, you guys have been trying to pick up the pieces and become friends again. And compared to the time I first met you both, you’ve come a long way.”

Stan didn’t reply. 

“And suddenly, this guy that your brother used to work with appears out of nowhere, and he grabs all of Ford’s attention instantly because he’s the new pitiful lost soul. Shakes up everything the two of you have been spending more than a month trying to rebuild. I think I would be pretty upset about that.”

Stan sat silently for a few moments, piloting the car down Berkenbach Drive. Helen’s house was the fourth on the left. Finally he said, “Yeah, well, maybe I am jealous. It does kind of suck that things have been going so well, and now I’m getting treated like a damn afterthought. I had enough of that when Ford and I were teenagers. I don’t need it again.”

“I know,” Helen replied. She meant it too. “I heard the way he talked to you, and I heard at least a little of the fight. It’s not fair, the way he’s been treating you since this started. Especially not with how supportive you’ve been.”

Stan eased the car to a stop. Helen’s house - a tasteful one-story white bungalow with a concrete footpath leading up a blue front door - loomed over them, dark and slightly foreboding. For a moment, Helen feared it, and did not want to go inside. After today, she knew that her already shaky relationship with the dark would only get worse. She’d have to look into more lights for the outside than the flimsy porch light over the door.

Stan put the car in park and switched off the ignition, but made no move to get out. He stared blankly ahead, one hand still limply hanging from the steering wheel. Helen reached a hand over, and placed it over his. “Hey,” she said, moving her head to meet his gaze. He turned his head slightly towards her. “When we get back to the house, the three of us are going to sit down and talk about this, okay?”

“Okay,” Stan said simply. 

Helen smiled at him, gave his hand a gentle squeeze, and took it away to open her door. She was surprised when she heard Stan’s door open as well. “Come on, Stan,” she said. “I don’t need you to come in with me.”

“You made me leave you alone in a room with a guy who tried to lunge for your throat today,” Stan said, slamming his door shut behind him. Even under the dim light of the streetlamps, Helen could see a grin forming on his face. It was a welcome change from the numb look he’d had in the car. He continued, “The very least you can let me do is escort you inside while you throw together a night bag.”

“Why, Stanley Pines,” she said, digging her house key out of her jacket pocket. “When did the hardened man of the street become so chivalrous?”

Stan circled around the front of the car, and began following her up the footpath. “Chivalry ain’t got nothing to do with it, doc,” he said, shoving his hands in his pocket. “I just happen to like looking out for my friends.” 

Helen couldn’t help but smile at him as they made it to the front door. She quickly unlocked it, and fumbled around for the living room light switch. It was always the first switch she went for when she came home, the first one she’d always instructed her children to hit when they walked in the door after dark. It illuminated the front room almost entirely, and would let them know right away if anything was wrong. 

She did a quick survey of the room. To the keen eye of a single mother who’d had many late nights, nothing seemed off. She stepped the rest of the way in, shoving her keys back into her pocket. They had to cut through the dining room to get to the hall that lead to the bedrooms, so she went off that way. Stan trumped along behind her, his footsteps heavy even on her plushy, carpeted floor. 

Helen flicked on the dining room light as they walked through the archway. The first thing brought to her attention was the partially finished puzzle from last night. She heard Stan walk over to it, and called after her as she walked out the other archway and into the hall. “Never pegged you as a puzzle person.”

“I got bored last night,” she lied. She passed the kids’ rooms, the hall bathroom they shared, and finally got to her own, the last door on the right. “It was too quiet, you know, without the kids here.”

“Where are they anyway?”

“San Francisco, at my brother’s. For the long weekend.”

“You didn’t go?”

“Nah, I decided to man the fort. Michael and I don’t share the same ideas about a good time,” she lied again. Truthfully, she and Michael were very alike, and she was probably closest to him, especially compared with Caroline (whose workaholic tendencies didn’t lend well to regular phone calls or letters) and Rebecca (who was usually caught up in another whirlwind romance that she swore up and down was “the one” this time). But she wasn’t about to tell Stan her real reasons. Not when his own life was already a bit of a mess. 

She opened her closet - pristine and organized with every blouse and pair of slacks hung up perfectly on the hanger - and grabbed her duffel bag, shoved in the corner, condemned to a life there after her last failed attempt to join a gym. She decided to forgo the nice, hung-up clothes, and closed the closet again. She tossed the duffel bag on her unmade bed, and went over to her dresser. She opened the top drawer, pulling out a pair of underwear. She hesitated for a moment before grabbing a clean bra. Normally, on the weekend, she didn’t bother with a clean one, and kept the same one on from Friday to Sunday evening. But she figured Stan and Ford, being men with no experience with the etiquette of lady’s undergarments, should not be subjected to that. She tossed them on the bed with the duffel bag. 

As she opened the next drawer to fish out an old t-shirt she had from the last time she gave blood (a favorite to wear around the house when she had nothing to do), she heard footsteps behind her. She called out, “Great, you can carry my bag for me once I’ve got it all packed up.” She found her shirt, and grabbed a pair of faded jeans to go with it, and turned around, ready to rib Stan some more about what he was willing to do for his friends.

Stan Pines was not there. Instead, a tall figure, face obscured by a red robe, stood before her, imposing and silent like a monster from a nightmare.

For a moment, Helen couldn’t breathe. And when she finally could again, the first thought that went through her mind was what had happened to Stan. After it faded, all instincts and alarms screamed at her to run. Dropping the clothes, she tried.

She wasn’t fast enough. The hooded figure reached out an arm as she tried to jolt past, clotheslining her directly in the ribs. It knocked the wind from her lungs, and she coughed once as the figure began moving backwards, towards her bed. 

Panic flooded Helen’s mind. The bed only met this person wanted one thing. Her stomach lurched, and she opened her mouth, thinking she might vomit, but instead, a shrill scream filled the room. It vibrated off the walls as she continued to wail and shriek and suddenly her legs were kicking out and she was clawing at this intruder’s arm with her stubby fingernails.

She fought like a demonic force. She screamed Stan’s name, hoping there’d be some answer, that he’d come running and help her. He didn’t. As she was thrown on the bed and pressed into the quilt her grandmother had given her as a housewarming gift, the robed figure pinned her down with their weight, a knee in her stomach for good measure. 

Helen thought briefly about crying, a wave of defeat briefly crashing over her. But no. She wouldn’t give this fucker the satisfaction. 

The hooded figure leaned down, and whispered one sentence to her. “Where is he?”

Helen stared back up at this intruder, their face somehow still obscured by the hood. She tried to throw up an arm and remove it, so she could see this bastard’s face, but as soon as she made any movement, two strong, wise-like hands came down and pinned her arms above her head. 

Helen felt like her heart was about to beat out of her chest.

“Where is he?” the figure repeated. “I will not ask a third time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, you son of a bitch,” Helen cried shrilly. She thrashed again, but it amounted to very little with their tremendous weight pressing down on her.

“Very well,” the figure said. They removed one hand from Helen’s wrist, expertly grabbing it up with the remaining hand before she could react. They reached into the rob, and pulled out a gun.

Helen couldn’t fight the gasp. She didn’t stop to think about how it was the weirdest looking gun she’d ever seen in her life, long and golden, with a bulb on the top, and a dial on the side. There was no doubt in her racing mind that she was going to die tonight. 

“Please,” she heard herself whimper, “please, I have three children! Please don’t…”

“I know,” the figure told her, their voice terrifyingly even as they leveled the gun at her forehead. “They’ll be alright. Soon, you’re mind will be clear.”

Helen closed her eyes.

She heard a click. Nothing happened. Another click, followed by a frustrated growl. 

Then she heard someone cry out, and two bodies smack against each other. The weight was suddenly ripped off her, and she heard a fist connect with flesh. She opened her eyes and sat up, even though her entire body felt like gelatin. Stan was on top of the figure, wailing away with expert punches, every one hitting a mark that seemed to cause the robed figure immense pain. She caught a sight of red at Stan’s temple, and realized he was bleeding. The intruder must have hit him in the head. 

But how did he get in here? The door was locked. There was nothing disturbed. There was no indication there’d been another person here.

And then she saw it - the eye crossed out with an x. Stitched on the hood of the robe. 

Suddenly, the robed figure shot out the arm that still held the strange gun, managing to strike Stan right where he bled. The butt of the gun him with a wet thud, and Stan let out a surprised yelp of pain. Disoriented, Stan faltered, and the figure took the opportunity to shove him off and stand. As Stan tried to recover from the blow, the figure reared back a foot and kicked him square in the ribs. Helen winced in sympathy as Stan let out a harsh gasp, and an arm was immediately wrapped around his waist in defense. This didn’t stop the hooded figure, and he kicked again, hitting Stan in the elbow. Stan shouted out in pain, and lost his balance enough to fall back to the floor. The figure continued his assault.

_Do something Helen, goddamit!_

Her brain was screaming, trying to force her to move, to help her friend. She couldn’t make her limbs obey. What could she do?

And then, she felt her keys shift in her jacket pocket. She remembered the first self-defense lesson her mother had taught her when she was getting ready to move to college. 

_Your car keys are as good as any knife. Some bastard tries to hurt you, you put that key between your fingers and you start slashing._

Her fingers felt numb as she pulled the keys out of her pocket. Feeling came back slowly as she positioned the key to her front door, shiny and silver and sharp, between her index and middle finger.

Then, with all the strength she had left in her rubbery legs, she launched herself off the bed, towards the intruder, and took her mother’s advice.

The robe was thin, just like Fiddleford’s, and the key cut through it easily. The intruder was crying out and cursing at her, telling her to stop, calling her all sorts of horrible names. She ignored them. This person had broken into her house, tried to hurt her, had hurt her friend, and was now expecting mercy from her?

In that moment, the entire Hippocratic oath died in Helen’s head.

She brought her key up higher, and began hacking away at the darkened area under the hood, where she knew a face had to be. She felt delicate skin give under her onslaught, and a spray of blood splashed on to her hand. She didn’t even realize that they were inching closer and closer to her bedroom door until the intruder nearly fell backward into the hall. The gun slipped from his hands as he threw out his arms to keep himself from falling. Before she could reposition herself to keep hacking away, he took advantage of the open space to flee, heading towards the front door. 

She would have chased after him, but then she heard a groan come from behind her. Stan. She immediately turned around and went to him. She dropped to her knees as soon as she was by his side, her whole body heavy and tired.

Stan, propping himself up on his hand and knees, kept an arm wrapped tightly around his midsection, and every breath he let out was a gasp of pain. Helen guessed he probably had bruised ribs at the very least, possibly even a cracked one. His head, mercifully, had stopped bleeding, but the wound still looked angry. They needed to call the police and an ambulance. But Helen couldn’t force herself to get to her feet and grab the phone less than a yard away from her. 

“Stan,” she said, amazed at how weak her voice was, “are you okay?” She put her hands on his shoulders, and gently coaxed him back, until he was sitting on the floor. He leaned against her, resting his head on her shoulder, still gasping every breath.

“Are you okay?” she repeated. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he muttered, his voice tight with pain. “I’ve been messed up a lot worse than this, so don’t worry about it.”

“Please don’t make me think about that right now.”

“Sorry,” he said sincerely. He reached up a finger and felt the wound on his head, pulling it away to find it coated in his own blood. He let his arm fall back by his side nonchalantly. “Bastard’s just lucky he got me in the head first. Otherwise, I would have beat him to a smear. What about you?”

“I’m fine,” she replied.

Stan obviously didn’t believe her anymore than she believed herself. “Did he…ya know, hurt you?”

“No,” she said, her stomach lurching at the implications. “He pulled out a gun on me, but it must have jammed or something. You came in before he could do anything else.”

“Holy shit, Helen, he pulled a gun on you?”

Helen nodded, and suddenly, the strangeness of the gun came to mind. She turned her head slightly, and saw it laying where the intruder had dropped it. It truly was the strangest gun she’d ever seen, and growing up in a small wilderness town in a red state, she’d seen her fair share. It almost looked like the scanners they used at the supermarket, to read barcodes on groceries. 

“I don’t think the point was to kill me though,” she said quietly. 

She gently eased Stan off of her, and got to her feet, intending to call the cops right now. Get this all sorted out. But then she heard Stan mutter, “The hell…” from the floor. 

She looked over to him. Next to the spot where she’d dropped by her side were her bloodied keys. 

Stan looked up at her like he was gazing upon a person he’d never seen before. “Did you stab him with your car keys?”

“Not all of us used to beat people up for spare cash,” Helen said. “We make due with what we can.” With that, she grabbed the phone out of its cradle and dialed the Gravity Falls police department.

The keys were beginning to stain the carpet.

\--------------------------

Ford pulled over a bit to let the police car drive by, its sirens wailing. He took the moment of peace to wipe at the tears trailing down his face with his shirt sleeve. He hadn’t stopped crying since he’d left the house, driving around with no real purpose in mind. His only goals had been to get out of the house and occupy himself. 

He’d never felt worse in his entire life. He kept seeing Fiddleford staring back at him, his eyes full of nothing but anger and resentment. It hurt even worse because, up until then, it’d been like nothing had ever gone wrong between them. They were reminiscing and laughing and having a good time together. 

But then Ford had ruined it all over the course of a few poorly chosen sentences.

The police sirens faded into the distance. Ford didn’t keep the car moving forward. Instead, he pulled up next to the curb and parked. 

He let out another pained sob. He’d destroyed Fiddleford’s life by bringing him out here, and he deserved to have that look of pure hatred leveled at him. 

He could practically hear Bill laughing at him. He hadn’t had contact with the demon since what happened to Fiddleford, but sometimes he could swear that he felt that eye watching him, hear that loud, nasally voice laugh at his pitiful attempts to sleep or protect himself. 

He almost wondered if, maybe, Bill was orchestrating all this from behind the scenes. Maybe Bill had never left his head at all, and was watching this all unfold as Ford did. He’d thought about way to keep Bill out, even going so far as to consider putting a metal plate in his head. But he’d chickened out at the last minute. After what happened with the kitchen knife, the idea of slicing himself open and seeing his own blood made him want to vomit. 

So there was a distinct possibility that Bill could still be there, with him, despite his attempts to dismantle the portal and keep him sealed away in his own dimension forever. 

Ford felt a wave of despair wash over him. He leaned against the steering wheel of Helen’s car, and let out a stream of keening sobs. It was the hardest he’d cried since he and Stan had made up, and at least then, those had been tears of relief. 

Now, his sobs were ragged and full of pain. The kind made by a man who no longer saw a point in trying.

No matter what he did, he would never be able to fix all the damage he’d done. 

Fiddleford wanted nothing more to do with him

He’d fought with Stan, who’d only been trying to help. 

And now, the one who’d started all of this, who continued to haunt him and torment him and rob him of his peace of mind might still be there, watching his life unravel without ever needing to lift a finger. Why should Bill have to put forth any effort when Ford was so great at messing up his own life? 

He gripped the steering wheel so hard, his hands started to ache from the strain. Still, he held on as long as he could, sobbing until there was nothing left inside of him. And even after he’d run out of the energy to cry, he shook with the force of his sadness, like a leaf in a cruel winter gust. 

He didn’t think he’d be able to go back to the house as long as Fiddleford was there. Just thinking about his former friend made every muscle in his body clench in shame. But he also knew that he couldn’t just throw him out, tell Helen that maybe a hospital was better, just because he felt uncomfortable with Fiddleford being there. 

He heaved out a tired, sad sigh. He wanted nothing more than to go back to before all of this happened. Back to before Bill, before the portal, before Gravity Falls, before Backupsmore, even before Stan was kicked out of the house. He wanted to go back and make all the right choices - talk to Stan about why he didn’t want him to leave home. Choose a safe, normal major. Go anywhere that wasn’t this horrible little town. Keep his best friend sane. 

He would have given anything he owned to change his life in that instance.

A loud crash jolted him out of his thoughts. He pulled up his head, and realized there was an alleyway not ten feet away from him. He looked at the stores on either side, and recollection suddenly hit him - this was the alleyway he and Stan had found Fiddleford in this morning. 

Ford didn’t know what possessed him. Perhaps, in any other state, he would have just started Helen’s car up, gone back to the house, and sat on the couch to feel sorry for himself until Stan and Helen came back.

But there was something that moved him to undo his seatbelt and open the door. Something told him to exit the vehicle, lock it, and walked that ten feet into the alleyway. He and Stan hadn’t searched it when they first found Fiddleford. Maybe there was something there.

In the back of his mind, he heard Fiddleford’s desperate voice. “No matter how many times I pull that trigger…”

Fiddleford couldn’t have been talking about a regular gun. He seemed bent on getting his life back, not ending his suffering through such drastic means. Maybe there was some kind of clue here.

His logical, reasonable side told him this was lunacy. How many clues could there possibly be here, in a dingy, dark alley? He needed to leave. 

But he ignored it. He moved on sheer hope - there had to be something. He couldn’t go back empty-handed. That would be the same as giving up. He’d stopped here for a reason. His attention had been drawn here for a reason. It was a hopeless, childish fantasy, and still he walked further into the dark alley. 

He couldn’t see a damn thing, but he knew there had to be something here. 

And then, pain exploded across the back of his head. He felt something wet trickle down his neck, stain his shirt. For a moment, his vision went entirely black. He felt himself fall forward in slow-motion, and hit the ground with a heavy thud. When he could finally see again, stars filled his vision. If his head hadn’t been throbbing like it was about to explode, he would have laughed if he had his wits about him. He’d never thought anyone actually saw stars after a crack to the head. Only cartoon characters. But there they were, dancing away to silent music. 

The world began to fade away, along with the throbbing. Darkness edged at his vision. He felt a wetness creep down the side of his face. Was he bleeding? 

The last thing he saw before the darkness overcame his vision completely was a flash of darkened red, inching into his vision, and a bloodied pipe hitting the concrete next to his face with a dull clang.


	4. Chapter 4

“Hell is not merely paved with good intentions. It is walled and roofed with them.”  
\- Aldous Huxley

\-----------------------

The world was nothing but static and loud droning. It made his ears ache. He wanted to plug up them up against the dreadful sound, but he couldn’t move his arms. He couldn’t move anything. As disoriented as he was, this didn’t disturb him much.

All he could think about was that damn droning. He realized hazily that it was coming from inside his own head. It buzzed and crackled like a broken radio, and the aching slowly moved from his ears to the rest of his head. It blossomed at the base of his skull and spread like a fire devouring dry kindling. He felt feverish. 

He wished he could say the same for the rest of him. Cold bit at his body, burrowing deep, through the thin sweater he wore and his old jeans. Had he forgotten a jacket when he left the house? With his head feeling as muddled as it did, he couldn’t really recall.

And the pain…oh dear God it was everywhere…

Ford felt his eyes flutter open, against his will, and he thought for a moment that he was going blind. Everything was a blurry, incomprehensible mess, a swirl of color and light and all mixed together with that damnable droning. His stomach churned as the world tilted a little, and he squeezed his eyes shut again, swallowing thickly at the bile that rose up threateningly in his throat. 

Someone barked something at him, but the droning in his ears muffled them considerably, and he didn’t want to risk opening his eyes again and losing control of what little was left in his stomach. He kept his head firmly down, and his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Then his head was suddenly snapped to the side by a harsh slap. He didn’t even register the pain of the stinging in his cheek at first, letting out a muffled grunt of surprise more than anything. Muffled? It was then he felt something on his face. He tried moving his mouth, but something covered it. Tape? Was he gagged? 

The droning slowly faded away, and Ford heard the voice from before speak again, much clearer and sharper this time. “I know you’re awake,” it hissed. It was thick and dangerous, like a choking oil spill, ready to throttle the life out of him, if need be. “Now open your eyes and look at me when I speak to you.”

Ford swallowed again, and tried to do what the voice asked of him, but found the pain throbbing in his head sapped any strength in the muscles in his neck. All he was greeted with, every time his brain sent out frantic messages to his limp muscles to lift his head, was another sharp stab of agony. He wanted to cry, both because of the pain and because of the fear.

Fingers suddenly gripped his hair tightly, and his head was yanked up. He let out a pathetically small whine through the tape as his head throbbed once again, and he swore he felt a tear finally fall from the sheer pain of it all. He wanted to beg whoever forced his head up to stop, but it only came out as a muffled grunt. 

A smear of red marred his vision, and it was then he realized that he wasn’t going blind. He was only missing his glasses. That realization made his stomach roil in dread. 

The smear of red leaned in closer to him, and came slightly more into focus. This close, he could vaguely make out the shape of a shadowy, humanesque face staring at him, hot, angry breath huffing out of its nostrils. The fingers wrenching his hair tightened, and Ford let out another humiliatingly pathetic whimper of pain. He hated himself for doing it, but he couldn’t help it. Every yank made the pain in his head intensify. He felt like it was going to explode.

“Believe me, interloper,” a man’s deep, angry voice hissed at him, “this is nothing compared to what I can do to you if you don’t tell me exactly what I want to know. Do you understand?”

Ford’s heart pounded in his ears as his gaze went downwards. He could very faintly make out that he was sitting in a chair. Thick ropes were tied around his wrists, holding them to the arms. He tried to move his legs and found he couldn’t. He assumed they were tied to the legs of the chair. The rope was tied so tightly that, when he gave his wrist an unsure, testing yank, the coil bit hard into his skin. He was sure it would break and draw blood.

All rational thought had abandoned him. He dared barely even breathe, despite his lungs beginning to burn. All he could think was that he was going to die here. More tears fell in spite of himself.

Another painful jerk of his head. “I asked if you understood me!” 

Ford nodded frantically. He finally released the air he’d been holding in, and it came out as shaky, shuddering bursts through his nose. The hand grasping his hair violently released him, tossing his head back. It sent another flaming burst of agony up his neck, crackling through his head like sparks. It hurt worse than anything in recent memory - more than Bill flinging him down the stairs, more than being forced to cut open his own palm. He trembled as he brought his head forward anyway. He didn’t want to incur the wrath of his captor again. 

The hand came down once more, and the tape was violently ripped from his face. He couldn’t help the pained gasp that escaped. He longed for that numbness that first greeted him when he woke up. Now, every sensation was vivid and omnipresent. The stinging burn left by the tape being ripped off his skin felt like someone was holding a hot poker to his face.

His breaths came out raggedly as the figure before him spoke again, “We know you know where our leader is, interloper. Tell us where he is. Now.”

“Wh-what…” was all Ford could manage to say. Any words he may have had - pleas to be let go, bargains he could make for his freedom, even pitiful whines about how much pain he was in - died on his tongue, and all he could ask was that one, pathetic, stupid question.

It earned him another slap to the face. 

“Insolent worm,” the robed man hissed. The hand shot back out, and Ford squeezed his eyes shut for another slap, but instead felt the front of his shirt being clutched. The figure pulled him forward. Ford felt the back legs of the chair leave the floor, as he was brought closer to the robed man’s face. This close, he could smell the figure’s breath as he added, “You cannot trick me. I know you have our leader. We saw you take him away. And you will lead us to him, or -”

Another man’s voice, soft, smooth, and richly deep, echoed from the shadows. “Thank you, brother. That is quite enough.”

Reluctantly, the figure let go of Ford’s shirt, so abruptly that, as the chair fell back to the floor, Ford was momentarily afraid it would tip back completely, leaving him prone on his back. Fortunately, the chair merely rocked once, and was still. Ford fought the churning in his stomach, and let his head lull forward. 

“Sir,” the robed figure said, “I was merely trying to extract information from the interloper.”

“I know,” the rich voice said. “And I do not agree with your methods in the slightest. You know this is not what our leader would have wanted us to do. He envisioned us as a group of peace, and we shall maintain that vision, even in his absence.”

Ford watched as another robed figure came into the light. He could tell, through the haze, that this man was smaller, and practically floated towards them, hands hidden in the bright red sleeves of his robe, head bowed submissively. He thought he could make out part of a chin, though it could have been a trick of his weak sight and the dim light. 

“Now then,” the gliding figure said, coming to a stop at the other figure’s side, “why don’t you leave me alone with our guest? I believe that your…direct methods will not get us the answers we seek.”

“But I -” the larger man began.

The smaller man turned to face the larger so sharply that the larger actually took a startled step back. Ford still couldn’t see the smaller man’s face, but however he was looking at the larger man must have been effective. The larger figure shrank back on himself mere moments after locking eyes with him. 

The larger figure bowed his head, and then bowed at the waist to the smaller figure. “Yes sir,” he mumbled. “Many apologies, sir.”

“Close the door behind you,” the smaller figure said in reply, his tone once again even and smooth. He turned back to face Ford, and the larger figure quickly scampered out of the room. Ford heard a large door being shut. His heart began pounding in fear once more.

The smaller figure stood before him for several seconds, not moving at all. Even though Ford couldn’t see this man’s face, he could feel him staring at him, sizing him up, judging the best way to go about finding out what he wanted to know. Who was this leader they kept referring to? Why would Ford know anything about that?

That richly deep voice ripped through the silence. “The elusive Dr. Stanford Pines. It is a pleasure to finally meet you. I beg you to forgive the behavior of my friend. This is a difficult time for us all. Some are reacting less rationally than others.”

Ford blinked a few times in surprise. Questions buzzed in his head like a hive of angry wasps. He couldn’t even think of where to start. Which was why it shocked him when one finally tumbled out. “How…how do you know my name?”

“You’ll find, doctor, that I know at least a little about everyone in this town,” the man replied. “And now, allow me to introduce myself.”

The figure removed two incredibly pale hands from the sleeve of his robe, and pulled back his hood. Ford stared in shock at the face revealed to him. The young man staring intently at him couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. The obvious youth was ill-fitting with the rest of him. His face was practically skeletal; Ford could make out highly defined cheekbones, and a pointed, birdlike nose. The young man’s skin was an ashen gray in the dimness, making him look like a vampire or some other creature of the undead. And…were his eyes two different colors? Ford squinted a bit, trying to focus his vision, and saw that it wasn’t that the young man had different colored eyes, but that his right eye was scarred and filmed over, giving it a washed out, reddish look. He was totally bald, and Ford could make out the faint markings of tattoos all over his skull, though what it was supposed to be, he couldn’t begin to guess. 

Ford gazed upon this strange young man, far too young to be staring down men twice his size and ordering them around in a deep, commanding voice, and found his fear quickly replaced by utter confusion. 

“I am known as Blind Ivan,” the young man said. “I am the current leader of the Society of the Blind Eye.”

“The what?” Ford couldn’t stop himself before the question slipped out. He was beginning to forget all about being tied to a chair with an aching head. His curiosity was nipping its way through once more. 

“The Society of the Blind Eye. We are a group dedicated to helping the people of this town forget.”

“Forget what?”

“Anything, Dr. Pines,” Ivan replied. “There are things in this town that no one can explain, things…that people are better off not knowing about. For so long, the citizens here could live in ignorant bliss, none the wiser of the things that dwelled here.” Ivan leveled a gaze at him, and although his face remained passive, Ford could see the accusation behind his intense eyes. “And then you showed up, doctor. You, with your scientific curiosity and your need for answers. You drew out the creatures in the woods and tampered with the dark magic that calls this town home.” He took a threatening step towards Ford, his eyes still boring into his head, and Ford instinctively shrunk back against the chair. Now he understood the first figure’s obvious fear of this strange young man.

“You have no idea what you have caused, Dr. Pines,” Ivan said, his voice dangerous and low. 

Ford’s heartbeat picked up again. How much did this strange man know about him? How could he possibly know any of it? Ford had never seen or spoken to him in his entire life. 

Ivan’s face suddenly softened a bit, a small, sly smile spreading across his face. “Then again,” he said, “I suppose that I cannot blame you for the supernatural occurrences of this town. They have always been here, always haunting its good people.” A wistful, far-away look passed over Ivan’s face, and his smile faltered slightly. He gave his head an imperceptible shake and said, “You merely sought them out, to study and understand. I suppose one can hardly fault a man of science for wanting to understand.” 

The grin returned, possibly wider now. “If anything, doctor, I should thank you. Without you, we would not even exist. Without you, our leader would not have been inspired to bring us together, so that we may have unity, to face the horrors of what we don’t understand together.” A sadness tinged Ivan’s smile as he said, “It is a shame that our leader had to suffer as he did to do so, and at your hand, no less, but I believe I speak for us all when I say we are grateful to you, Dr. Pines.” Ivan bowed his head slightly.

Ford tried to make sense of what he’d just been told. Suffered? At his hand? What did that mean? Ford had never hurt anyone in his life. Had he?

And then, as suddenly and painful as a bolt of lightning jolting through his body, it came to him. “Are you talking about Fiddleford McGucket?”

Ivan brought his hands together, close to his face, and bowed his head again, almost in reverence. When he looked back up to Ford, he replied, “Yes. He is our glorious founder and leader. I was his first follower, and as such, am his most loyal servant.” Ford didn’t miss the air of superiority that dripped from the words.

“I met him shortly after he completed the device, and used it for the first time,” Ivan continued. Ford wanted to ask what device he was talking about, but Ivan seemed to forget there was even another person in the room with him. “I asked him to help me forget, and he took pity on me. I remember nothing of that day, not a thing. That is how much he helped me. I swore that I would help him in his mission to help others. He wanted everyone to have the opportunity to forget as we had, to move on, to leave painful things behind. We soon gained more followers, as dedicated to our mission as we were.”

“Followers?” Ford finally managed to interject. Ivan looked down at him, as if surprised he was still there. 

“Yes,” Ivan replied, as if he were replying to the ignorant question of a child. “Only a handful at the moment, but we shall grow. As long as there are people out there wanting to help, our numbers will only grow.”

Ford could hardly believe what he was hearing. Fiddleford McGucket - a shy, sweet man from the backwoods of Tennessee - had started an honest to God _cult?!_

“This…this is insane,” Ford breathed.

Ivan scowled deeply, and said, “I would not expect you to truly understand us, doctor. Seeking out the mysteries of this world as you do, you cannot even begin to fathom us. You cannot begin to perceive the danger it poses to us. We do this to protect ourselves.”

“But how is forgetting about what you’ve seen supposed to protect you?” Ford asked. The question seemed to catch Ivan off-guard. “You’re making it sound like I don’t bother to study what I find out about this town. I have, and because I study them I know how to protect myself. What you’re doing doesn’t keep anyone safe. It just leaves them totally unprepared.”

Ivan simply smiled. Ford didn’t know why, but it sent a shiver down his spine. There was something…wrong about the smile. Dangerous. The red, filmy eye scanned his body, like a hungry predator scanning for weak spots. Ivan seemed to find what he was looking for, and took another step closer to Ford’s chair. He leaned in, so close that Ford’s hair nearly brushed against the ashen skin of Ivan’s face.

Then he asked, “Why can’t you sleep at night, Dr. Pines?”

Ford was so taken aback by the question he didn’t answer right away. Ivan must have read the look on his face as confusion, for he continued, straightening himself and beginning to pace in front of Ford’s chair. “You haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in days. Every time you close your eyes, you see something that makes you think it’s safer to stay awake. You keep telling yourself that until you’re so exhausted, your body won’t allow you to stay awake any longer. And by then, you’re too tired for the monsters to find you again. Isn’t that right, doctor?”

Ford gaped for a minute longer, before asking, “I…you…what, have you been stalking me?”

Ivan chuckled darkly. “No,” he replied. “None of my followers will go near your cabin. Coupled with your…rather reclusive nature, that is why we know so little about you. Our leader was the only one who had concrete information, but, as you were the reason he cleared his mind, suffice to say, we no longer have access to it.”

“Then how -”

“I would recognize the signs of an exhausted man anywhere,” Ivan said casually. “Once one is intimately familiar with them, they tend to stay with you.”

Ivan reached into the sleeve of his robe again, and pulled out a small handgun. Ford flinched instinctively, a base reaction for self-preservation. But his rational mind took over once more as he analyzed the gun, and realized it was not a real one. At least, none like he’d ever seen (and he admitted to himself he’d seen very few). It was too large, and a golden color, with a long cylinder perched on top. And was that…a dial and a screen? Why would you need a dial and a screen on a handgun?

“When I said the Society helps people forget anything,” Ivan said, “I did mean anything. And there are many beasts haunting the minds of the people of Gravity Falls. Not just the sorts of beasts that come out of the woods.” Ivan held the gun on its side in his hands, reverently. “Our leader created this device, so that we may forget. It plucks whatever bad memory we wish out of our minds, and stores it away, so that it will never bother us again.” He stroked a finger down the glass cylinder. It was almost a loving caress. “It tames the beasts in our minds. We owe everything to this device.”

He began walking back to Ford’s chair, and stopped about a foot away. Ford kept his gaze on the strange gun. Even if it wasn’t the traditional kind of gun, he did not doubt it could do him serious harm if its wielder decided that’s what needed to be done.

“There are many such beasts in your mind, doctor. I can tell. And I can take them all away.” 

Ford jerked his head up to look Ivan square in the face. His expression was totally unreadable. Almost bored. He brought the gun up, and pointed it directly at the center of Ford’s forehead. “Just think, doctor,” Ivan said. “No more nightmares. No more beasts in your mind. One pull of the trigger is all it takes, and your mind will be clear. All you have to do is tell me where our leader is, and this will all be over.”

Ford stared down the barrel of this peculiar gun, trying to gauge if what Ivan said was true. He didn’t exactly put it past Fiddleford to be able to create such a thing. His genius rivaled Ford’s, especially when it came to anything mechanical. Fiddleford could take something apart and put it back together so it worked more efficiently and used less energy. He’d babbled on about creating personal computers for average people, to the point where Ford had to admit that they began to sound less and less like a hair-brained scheme and more like a possible technological achievement. 

The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t put it past his former friend. 

And knowing that, he allowed himself to ruminate over the possibilities of what Ivan was offering him. 

No more Bill, possibly traipsing about in his head while his life unraveled. 

No more nightmares.

No more flashbacks.

No more thoughts of what he’d done to Fiddleford. To Stanley. To himself.

No more of his own treacherous brain taunting _your fault, your fault, all your fault_.

God, that sounded like the sweetest thing in the world.

But then he remembered first finding Fiddleford. How gaunt and dirty and unhealthy he’d looked. The weight loss and the ragged clothes. The first pang of sympathy when Helen told them he had an unhealed broken wrist. The way he trembled and shook like a trapped animal, surrounded by people he didn’t remember. 

He knew that Fiddleford wanted nothing more to do with him now. That was his own fault. But he couldn’t give him back to these people. They were slowly killing him, whether they realized it or not, and Ford was not about to let that happen.

He’d already let Fiddleford down once. He was stopping it here.

“No.”

Ivan’s eyes widened slightly. He obviously had not been expecting such an answer. “What did you say?” His tone was deadly.

“I said no,” Ford replied, trying to keep his voice from wavering. “I’m not letting you bring him back to…this. This isn’t helping him. You have to understand that. When I found him he was starving and hurt and scared. He was a mess. If I brought him back to you, he would only get worse. I can’t. I won’t.”

Ivan’s face remained totally impassive, but Ford could see the fury burning in his eyes. He heard the gun rattle with the furious shaking of his captor’s hand. 

“If you’re really worried about his safety,” Ford said, “you’ll let him stay with me. I can take care of him. Please. Forgetting isn’t helping him.”

After a moment, Ivan lowered the gun, his eyes never leaving Ford’s face. Ford thought perhaps he’d gotten through to him. Maybe, underneath the fanaticism and fear, there was empathy. A real person who did care for Fiddleford, the way he did. 

Then, with a furious shout and a heavy sling of his arm, Ivan struck Ford directly in the right temple with the gun. Ford’s head once again exploded in pain. His chair tottered from the sheer force of the blow, and this time, there was nothing stopping it from tipping over. Before he could make a sound, Ford hit the floor, landing hard on his right arm. Pain jolted up and down his sides. He felt like something inside him was broken, but he couldn’t be sure. 

He tried to catch his breath and steady himself, but there was suddenly a vicious kick to his midsection. 

And another. 

And another. 

He counted seven in all, by the time Ivan’s anger was spent. He stood over Ford, panting heavily through clenched teeth, the burning hatred in his eyes never once even flickering. 

All Ford wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry. He’d never felt such pain before in his life. His head throbbed mercilessly, and he was so very, very dizzy. Every breath was white, hot agony. He knew Ivan must have broken something. Perhaps many somethings. He didn’t care. All he knew was pain and he would have given anything to make it stop. 

After a moment, Ivan’s breathing evened out, and his face once again morphed into that passive, bored expression. If Ford had been better aware of anything but the hurt, he would have been unnerved by the eerie fluidity of it. 

Ivan gazed down at him, tilting his head a bit, almost curiously. It was like Ford was some new species of insect with pretty wings Ivan was preparing to violently rip off. 

To Ford’s amazement, Ivan reached down, and brushed a trace amount of Ford’s hair out of his face, almost tenderly. Ford felt something wet trickle down his face. It pooled a bit at the corner of his mouth, and he recognized the coppery taste of his own blood. 

“I offered you peace,” Ivan said so quietly, Ford almost didn’t hear him. “No one else can give you what I was prepared to give you. For a man of science, you certainly are a fool.” 

Ivan straightened himself, brushing at some dust that had gathered on his robes, shaking out wrinkles. “Normally,” he said, his tone formal and uninterested, “I would wipe your memory and have my followers dump you back at that godforsaken shack you call home.” 

He leveled a withering gaze down at Ford, who was currently gasping a bit as he struggled to draw one breath that didn’t make his whole body ache. “But you may be of use to us yet, doctor. And even if don’t provide us with the information we want, I’m sure that many of my followers will get immense satisfaction out of seeing one who spits so readily in the face of all we stand for…humbled a bit.”

Ivan began to walk away, slipping into the darkness as easily as he’d emerged from it. Ford could still hear him. “Perhaps I’ll tell them you’re an agent of one of the monsters that torments them. Say the only way to ensure the safety of the town is to destroy the monster’s spy.” He chuckled again. “Yes, doctor. I believe you will be very useful to us, indeed.”

Ford heard a door open, and Ivan’s footsteps recede. As the door closed, Ford couldn’t help himself - he let out a keening sob, not caring how badly it made his ribs ache.

\-----------------------

“Honest, Mrs. Stillwell, we’d like to help, but if he didn’t take anything, there ain’t much we can do.”

Stan wanted to sock this redneck sheriff right in his doughy, slack-jawed face. So hard, the brother and sister that had to be his parents would feel it. 

But then another wave of dizziness swept through him. He decided to just sit at Helen’s dining room table for the time being, and let the paramedic put the finishing stitches on his throbbing head wound. 

When his head finally started to settle from the unwarranted spinning, he managed to look out of the corner of his eye, and saw the paramedic - a young African-American man, probably not much older than Stan himself - flicking a glance over at the bubbling cauldron that was Helen’s interactions with the sheriff. The paramedic’s face was a mish-mash of morbid curiosity, and an awe-inspired fear of God himself.

And when Stan realized how Helen’s face was darkening with rage, he didn’t blame the guy. He wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up being the one to deal this butterball a punch directly to the jaw. 

She and the sheriff stood off to the side of the table. The sheriff leaned nonchalantly against a chair, propping his arms against the backs. Helen was eyeing it like she wanted to kick it out from under him.

“It’s Dr. Bergstrum, _Leroy_ ,” she said, spitting out the name like a bite of rancid meat. “And you mean to tell me you can’t do anything about some whack-a-doodle breaking into my house and assaulting us?”

Leroy Muggins - pot-bellied, sleepy-eyed, tasting retirement, and current sheriff of Gravity Falls - merely shrugged, and said, “Not really. Neither of ya got a good look at ‘im, and he didn’t take nothing. We can file a report, but that’s about it. Maybe ya better lock yer doors from now on.”

“My doors were locked,” Helen said. Stan saw her fingers twitch, itching to make a fist. 

“Sorry, Mrs. Stillwell,” the sheriff said (Stan swore he was calling her by the wrong title on purpose now; and who the hell was Mrs. Stillwell?). “But I find it pretty hard to believe that a feller could just waltz into your house if it was locked. Didn’t see no signs of forced entry or nothing. Maybe ya just forgot to lock it earlier. It happens, ‘specially to a little lady who’s got lots on her mind.”

That seemed to rankle Helen more than the deliberate missus bullshit and the lazy hick drawl combined. She stood up tall, ramrod straight, and hissed, “Fine then. File your damn report. I’ve told you everything I know, my friend is patched up, so you and your useless ass can get out of my house.”

“Now, Mrs. Stillwell…”

“I said get out, Leroy,” Helen snapped. “And it’s Dr. Bergstrum. I didn’t spend the best years of my life in medical school to treat your damn hemorrhoids so you could call me Mrs. Stillwell.”

Stan almost didn’t stop the laugh in time. 

Muggins blushed profusely at the mention of his obviously previously-thought-to-be private problem, and quietly said, “Y’all have a good night now,” and quickly left the room. The front practically slammed shut behind him.

Helen seemed to calm down a little, now that the prick was gone, but not by much. She paced anxiously, nibbling a bit on her thumbnail. She went back and forth a few times, seemingly forgetting Stan and the paramedic were there.

Stan wished he knew what to say to make the rigidness of her spine decreased, to reassure her that, whatever awful scenarios about what could have happened to either of them traipsed about in her head, they would never come to fruition now. He wished he knew what to say to make her believe that everything was okay. 

But he didn’t. He couldn’t think of anything that might placate her. He was already having a hard time convincing himself that everything would be okay. 

Suddenly, Helen ripped her thumb away from her mouth, and stomped off towards her bedroom again. “I’ll be right back,” she muttered over her shoulder as she disappeared around the corner.

Stan heard the paramedic let out a low whistle next to him. “Muggins is a crazy man, egging her on like that,” he said, giving the scissors he was using to cut gauze one final snip. He secured a small bit of gauze with his fingers, and tossed the rest, along with the scissors, back in his open medical bag by his feet. “If there’s one thing people at Gravity Falls General know, it’s that you don’t mess with Helen Bergstrum when she’s mad. As if she doesn’t have enough shit to deal with.”

Stan didn’t miss the implicating tone of the paramedic’s voice. There was meaning there, something bigger than he was letting on, and Stan almost wanted to ask him to elaborate. Did this have to do with whoever Mrs. Stillwell was? Or something else? He was surprised at how badly he wanted to know.

But if there was something more to it, he decided that maybe Helen should be the one to tell him, not some paramedic who might or might not be stretching things. 

“Yeah, that guy was a tool,” Stan muttered. He reached up to feel the tiny stitches now ridging down his temple, under a tiny strip of gauze. It sent a shudder through him, taking him back to the 1970s and a too-white room for a moment.

The paramedic hadn’t noticed, busy gathering up his things and slipping back into his jacket. He said, “Amen to that, my man. To be perfectly honest with you, I was kinda hoping she would lay him low. Woulda served him right.”

“He’s that bad, huh?”

“Let’s just say sexism isn’t the only charm he’s got.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m thirty, and the jackass still calls me boy. So, I was rooting for the doc.”

Stan laughed a bit, and said, “Well, thanks for the help, uh…”

“Darryl.” The paramedic gave a mischievous grin and tugged on his jacket, which had a white nametag, spelling his name out in bold, black letters. 

“Darryl,” Stan repeated, feeling the slightest bit sheepish. “Sorry.”

“Man, you got beaned right in the head,” Darryl replied, waving him off. “I’ll give you a little more leeway. Just so long as you don’t call me boy too.” He gave Stan another smile, and held out his fist. Stan bumped his against it.

“Take care of yourself,” Darryl continued, shrugging into his jacket. “Be careful of those stitches. They come out, you go to the hospital, got it?”

“Got it.”

“Sweet,” Darryl said. “Now I’m gonna get out of here before she decides that she really does wanna take off someone’s head, and it ends up being mine. Have a good one, man.”

As Darryl shut the front door behind him, Helen came stomping back into the room, a bag slung over her shoulder. She yanked the zipper up on her jacket, and adjusted her glasses, which had gotten slightly crooked on her face. Stan sat silently, waiting for her to speak first. Last thing he wanted was her snapping at him too. 

Helen finally looked up at him, and her face softened marginally. Stan supposed he must have looked wary of her, like she was a drunken thug looking for a fight. He watched as she closed her eyes and took in a few deep breaths, and her shoulders came down ever so slightly. 

When she opened her eyes again, she said, “So are you gonna die or what?”

Stan smiled in relief and replied, “Nah, Darryl got me all fixed up.”

“Good,” Helen said. “Let’s head back to your place. I’m surprised my phone isn’t ringing off the hook because Ford’s wondering where they hell we’ve gotten to.”

“Are you sure you wanna go back?” Stan asked. “I thought maybe you’d…I dunno, wanna stay here, and…”

“And what, recover from my bout of the vapors?” Helen said, digging her keys out of her jacket pocket. They were still coated in the intruder’s blood. “I’m fine, Stan. If anything, I would feel better getting away from here for the night.”

Stan didn’t question that, and just gave a grunt of agreement. He wasn’t sure about the likelihood of Helen still wanting to punch something, but he wasn’t about to take his chances. He just shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, and followed her outside. 

As they reached the end of the walkway, she said, “You okay to drive?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I was a little dizzy, but I think the worst of it is over.”

Helen nodded and opened the door, sliding into the passenger seat, tossing her overnight bag in the floor at her feet. Stan followed suit on the driver’s side, started the engine, put the car in gear, and made a U-turn on Helen’s street to head back the way they came. He knew that was probably illegal, but he really felt like bucking the law after dealing with that sheriff.

Helen must have been thinking the same thing, as he heard her mutter under her breath, “Muggins is such a useless piece of shit. The only reason he still has that job is because the mayor is too senile to fire him.”

Stan nodded, and said, “Not to mention the fat bastard seems about as dumb as a box of rocks. Like, did he forget which house he was at? Who the hell is Mrs. Stillwell?”

Helen tensed a bit, turning her head to look out the window. A beat of the most awkward silence of Stan’s life followed, before she finally, quietly, said, “Until a year and a half ago, I was.”

“You never mentioned you were married.”

“Did you think I just found my kids in my mailbox?”

“No,” Stan said, surprised that he felt a little frustrated with her. He supposed he deserved it for being so evasive with her earlier. “I mean, I figured you had to have a husband at some point, you just…you never told us what happened to him.”

“We divorced,” Helen said simply. She nibbled on her thumbnail again. “Well, actually, to be precise, Richard divorced me after realizing he’d rather have a girlfriend than a wife.”

“I’m sorry,” Stan replied. He honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Don’t be,” Helen said. “At least the settlement was very fair. I got to keep the kids, the house, and the car, and he got to keep both his balls.”

Stan would have laughed if there had been any humor in Helen’s voice. “So, why did he call you Mrs. Stillwell?”

“I went back to my maiden name after everything was finalized. The kids are still Stillwells, but Daisy has told me repeatedly that she’s going to change it when she turns eighteen, and convince Scott and Amanda to do it too.”

“Makes sense. I wouldn’t be too fond of my dad for walking out on my mom either.”

Helen grunted in reply. Another oppressive silence filled the car as Stan piloted them onto the main drag. There were very few cars out tonight, only the few scant clusters of teens, desperately looking for something to do. In the distance, there was a rumble of thunder. It was going to rain soon, and it was going to be cold, but not cold enough to become snow.

Even the environment was matching how glum and heavy their lives were becoming. Stan let out a quiet sigh.

He almost started when Helen suddenly broke the silence by leaning down (making the leather of the seat groan underneath her), grabbed up her bag, and unzipped it. Then, she pulled out the weird gun the intruder had been carrying. “Let’s see if we can’t figure out what this is,” she muttered.

“Did you seriously steal evidence?” Stan asked incredulously.

“No,” Helen said, a smirk creeping into her voice. Stan had never been more grateful to hear it. “If it were evidence, Leroy would have said it was and taken it. But he didn’t. He just left it sitting in my hallway, like an idiot. I think that technically makes it mine now. Pretty sure there’s a law on the books like that somewhere in this town…”

She turned the strange gun over in her hands, examining it closely. She ran a thin finger down the strange bulb that acted as its barrel. 

“Doesn’t look like any gun I’ve ever seen,” Stan said. He liked to think he was more than a little well-versed in them. 

“Same here,” Helen said. “There’s no chamber, safety, lock…I’m starting to think it isn’t even really a gun at all.”

“I know who might be able to tell us more about it,” Stan said solemnly.

“You saw that guy’s robes too, didn’t you?”

“Yep. And they look exactly like McGucket’s.”

Helen sighed. “He’s definitely got a lot of explaining to do. But I’m really starting to think that guy didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“I have a couple stitches that say different.”

“I still don’t think that’s what he meant to do. If there was no sign of forced entry and nothing was taken, he was probably waiting specifically for me to get home. He probably wasn’t expecting you to be there.”

“I still don’t see how that equals ‘didn’t want to hurt you’. In fact, if he was just waiting for you, that makes me think of even worse shit.”

“But he didn’t do anything like that after he dispatched you,” Helen said, settling the gun on her lap. “He didn’t even lay a hand on me until I tried to run. He came up behind me and just stood there. I think he wanted something specifically from me, and was hoping I would give it to him willingly. He asked me where ‘he’ was…”

“You think that meant McGucket?”

“With the similar robes, that’s the only person I can think of.”

“Yeah…but that still doesn’t explain what the weird-ass gun is for. Why bring that if he didn’t plan on hurting anyone?”

“Maybe Ford has managed to talk to Fiddleford, get some answers. That’ll be the first thing we do as soon as we get back. I know he doesn’t want to believe that his friend is involved with anything bad, but -”

“But nothing,” Stan said, clenching the steering wheel a little harder as they turned onto the dirt road that lead out into the woods. The car jolted a bit as the smooth pavement disappeared, and continued to jounce periodically as it rolled over rocks and sticks. “After what just happened, I’m not putting anything past anybody anymore. That string bean could be behind the JFK assassination, and I’d believe it at this point.”

“Considering he’s as old as you, I would love to see how a nine year old could pull that off.”

“Hey, it’d definitely be easy for a little kid to hide on a grassy knoll.”

Helen shook her head a bit, and Stan saw a smile tug at her lips, despite the dark of the car. He was glad for it. She’d been so on edge, and the ordeal with the sheriff had only seemed to make it worse. He couldn’t help but remember her hackles rising when Muggins had mentioned her having a lot on her mind. Then Darryl mentioning how she had enough to deal with. He wondered if they meant the divorce. She did still seem pretty angry about it. But somehow, that just didn’t seem like the answer. He’d only known Helen for a while, but she just didn’t seem bitter.

This was something entirely different. He just couldn’t put his finger on what.

The trees parted before them, and Helen turned her head to look up at the house. But her eyes were instead drawn off to the side, and confusion clouded her face. 

“Stan,” she said, “ where’s my car?”

Stan slowed the car, and looked off to the side where Helen had parked her Buick. Sure enough, it was gone. “What the hell…” he muttered.

“Oh my God,” Helen breathed. “You don’t think…that guy could have come here?”

Stan didn’t even think before he jerked the wheel to the side and slammed on the break. He threw the gear shift in park and killed the engine, and kicked open his door. He was bounding up to the porch, and practically jumping up the front steps, while Helen called out to him to slow down and wait for her. 

He barely heard her. He had to get inside, had to make sure that freak wasn’t inside, doing God knew what to his brother. They should never have left him alone. Never should have taken McGucket in. Everything would be normal if they hadn’t seen that stupid hillbilly staring at them from the alleyway. Why hadn’t he been motivated enough to just make them breakfast that morning? 

Helen had jogged up to meet him as he fished his key out with trembling hands. He was about to jam it in the lock, sure it wouldn’t go in the first time, when the knob gave and turned in his hand. It was unlocked. His heart fell to his shoes as he let it swing open. He heard Helen curse under her breath behind him.

He raced inside, Helen close at his heels. He called out his brother’s name, hoping to hear a shout from somewhere, to let him know that his brother was okay. That everything was fine, and what the hell kept them.

Instead, he was met with the gentle clicking of Ripley’s claws as she sleepily padded her way out of the living room, and trotted over to her master. She was expecting pets, but as she got closer, she seemed to almost feel the panic radiating off Stan. She took a tentative step back, whining softly.

Stan called out again, and Helen called with him. He stepped into the living room, scanned all around. There was no sign anyone but Ripley had been there for the past hour and a half.

As he turned back, he saw Helen coming out of the kitchen. She shook her head when their eyes met, dropping her bag and the gun on the floor. 

Then Stan remembered the basement. That was one of the only places in the house where Ford couldn’t hear him if you called his name, as far underground and as cavernous as it was. And if he had power tools running, he was practically shut off from the rest of the world. Stan took large strides to reach the basement door, and threw it open. It was silent. No power tools, no muttering, and no clanging of metal as Ford took apart that damned portal of doom. Stan called out anyway. No answer. 

He slammed the basement door shut, making Helen start and gasp as she caught up with him. Stan inhaled deeply, trying to keep himself from panicking. Ford had to be here. He just had to. 

That’s when he heard it - soft, tentative steps coming down the stairs. He raised his head, and saw Fiddleford McGucket staring at them from the middle step. “What’s going on?” he asked, his eyes glazed over a bit with sleep.

Stan saw red. With a growl reminiscent of some kind of dangerous animal, he lunged to the base of the steps, and began sprinting up them.

He watched as Fiddelford’s eyes went wide, with dawning fear, and the other man gave a shrill scream of terror. He turned quickly and scrambled back up the stairs, practically tripping over himself to get away from Stan.

Stan could hear Helen calling after him as they reached the upper level, dashing up behind them, but he didn’t stop. He followed after Fiddleford like a hungry mountain lion chased after a doomed hiker. Fiddleford ducked into Ford’s bedroom, and tried to close the door behind him, but Stan was too fast. He shoved himself between the door and the frame, causing Fiddleford to lose his grip on the knob and stumble backwards. The door hit the wall with a heavy thud as he forced it open. 

“Where is he, you little freak?!” Stan screamed, the words echoing painfully off the wooden walls. 

Fiddleford looked up at him in absolute terror. Good. Stan wanted him to be scared. It was his fault any of this was happening in the first place. “I swear to God, you little fucker,” he growled, “if you’ve done anything to hurt him, I’ll fuck you up so badly your own mother won’t recognize your corpse!”

He shot out a hand and grabbed the front of the borrowed sweater Fiddleford was wearing, pulling the littler man close. Fiddleford let out a strangled shriek as Stan brought him close to his face. “Now, where is he?!” he screamed. He hoped it make the little twerp’s ears ring.

Fiddleford squeezed his eyes shut, his bony hand weakly clawing at Stan’s trying to release his grip. He stammered out a few nonsense syllables, and it only made Stan’s blood boil more. He wanted to beat this little nerd’s face in. Crush those glasses under his fist. Break that long, skinny nose. Reduce him to a smear on the floor.

It would be pittance compared to what he’d dragged Ford through.

In that moment in time, he just knew that, whatever had been happening to Ford these past four months, this bastard was the cause of it. He had to have something to do with that Cipher thing, it was probably his fault that Ford had been through nine kinds of hell. His rage-addled brain told him that he was probably even lying about not remembering. He probably remembered damn well. He just didn’t want to own up to it.

Stan couldn’t believe that he’d ever felt sorry for this sniveling gremlin squirming in his grasp. 

“If you don’t start talking, I swear -”

“Stan, stop it!” Helen cried, suddenly bursting into the room. She was slightly out of breath from chasing him up the stairs, but she immediately launched herself forward, grabbing Stan’s arms and trying to pry his grip lose. “This isn’t going to solve anything.”

“The hell it’s not,” Stan shouted back, whipping his head around to look her in the eye. “I’ll bet you everything I own that he knows exactly what’s going on, and exactly where my brother is. And if he doesn’t spill that second part in the next ten seconds, a broken wrist is gonna be the least of his problems.” He punctuated the threat with a hard shake, that drew another terrified whimper out of the man at the end of his arm.

“Stan, calm down for a second and think about this,” Helen said, her tone sharp and frustrated. She still had a firm grip on his fingers, trying in vain to loose them from Fiddleford’s sweater. She flicked a glance back up at him and continued, “If that guy from earlier really was looking for Fiddleford, why would he take Ford instead? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just take Fiddleford and run?”

Stan knew that it did make a hell of a lot more sense. He also realized that, if that guy had been here, the house would be in a lot less exactly the way they’d left it, since Ford was so desperate to help his friend that he would have fought tooth and nail to keep someone from taking him. He also knew that, unless the guy could fly, there was no way he could have walked here from Helen’s house, which he would have had to. Otherwise, why take Helen’s car? Yes, the more Stan looked at the situation before him and let rational thought take the helm, the less sense his blind rage made. 

But there was also the part of him that screamed his brother was missing, some crazy had nearly caved in his skull, and there was a scared hillbilly at the end of his fist that was the only thing tying those events together. And his brotherly instinct was proving to be a very loud, powerful force. 

After a moment though, he slowly uncurled his fingers and let Fiddleford go. The other man immediately backed as far as he could from Stan, bumping into the bed and falling back, then scrambling to press himself against the wall near the pillows. His wide-eyed gaze of horror never so much as faltered. 

Helen sighed, obviously relieved that one side of the conflict was now resolved, and turned her attention to Fiddleford. In an even tone that boggled Stan’s mind, she said, “Fiddleford, I’m sorry that Stan upset you so much, but we do have a lot of questions for you. A lot of weird stuff has been going on tonight, and you seem to be at the center of it all.”

Fiddleford stared at her, confused and possibly on the verge of tears. Stan would have felt bad, knowing that he was probably the biggest reason for them, but he ignored the feeling. He was too worried about Ford. If McGucket or one of his goons hadn’t taken him, where was he? He wouldn’t just leave. Would he? 

Throughout their entire lives, Ford had always been the more responsible one. Sure, he was just as willing to ignore rules, direct orders, and even the law in favor of scientific curiosity, but, in the end, his brother’s logic always won out. And, to Stan at least, there just wasn’t a logical reason for him to have left a man he really seemed to care about alone in a house he was clearly afraid of in the middle of the night. 

Unless he hadn’t been using his logic, Stan thought grimly. He had to admit, Ford had been pretty much an emotional wreck all day. Maybe something happened, between him and McGucket. Something that made him feel like he needed to get some air, think things through. Stan made sure to steer his thoughts clear of anything more drastic his brother might have done out of guilt. He told himself Ford would never resort to that. He wouldn’t resort to something that Stan knew was a very tempting avenue when you felt out of control.

Stan had to tell himself that. Otherwise, he’d just go right back into panic mode. 

Fiddleford’s small, quavering voice broke Stan out of his thoughts. “I don’t know what on earth either of you are talking about,” he said. “But you do have a hell of a lot of nerve thinking I’ll be anything close to cooperative after you let that…that maniac manhandle me like that.” He jabbed an accusatory finger in Stan’s direction. 

“You’re right, Stan shouldn’t have done that, and he’s sorry,” Helen said. She glanced over at Stan, her face stern, and said, “You are sorry, aren’t you, Stan?”

Stan prickled with annoyance. He wanted to tell the little dweeb that he’d do a lot worse than manhandle him if he didn’t start telling them what was going on, but he knew that would just waste more time. So he just nodded, and looked away from McGucket staring at him like one would look at a sleeping bear. 

Helen turned back to Fiddleford and said, “See? Everything’s fine.”

McGucket grunted and folded his arms across his chest.

Helen sighed a bit, and said, “Look, Fiddleford, Stan and I have had a crazy night, and like I said, you seem to be at the center of it all.”

“I don’t see how,” Fiddleford snapped. “I’ve been here all evening.”

“Then do you know where Stanford is?” Helen asked. 

That got Fiddleford to look back at her, his eyebrow raised in confusion. “Isn’t he downstairs?”

“No,” Helen replied. “He’s nowhere in the house, and my car is gone. Did he mention he was leaving?”

“No…” Fiddleford trailed off, and Stan swore he saw a kind of sad sheepishness spread across his face. He wanted to demand to know what the little twerp was hiding, but Fiddleford quietly added, “We…fought…about an hour and a half ago. We were trying to stir some of my memories. I…he…he didn’t even tell me I had a family…” 

Stan watched as tears welled up in the other man’s eyes, brought on by an unimaginable pain that Stan knew quite well. Alright, now he was feeling bad for the little dork. Goddammit.

Fiddleford caught the tears before they fell, and put a hand to his mouth, sniffling loudly. He held it there for a few moments, screwing his eyes shut and exhaling deeply. 

When he finally opened his eyes, the tears were gone, the pain only a minute trace of what it had been. “I was angry,” he said, “and I said some pretty awful things. But I can’t imagine that you would have said much different if you found out you’d forgotten about your own family.”

Neither Helen or Stan said anything. They didn’t have to. All three of them knew Fiddleford was right.

“I’ve been here ever since,” Fiddleford said. “I fell asleep, and the next thing I know, you two are running around, raising cain.”

“That’s because Ford’s gone, genius,” Stan snapped. As bad as he felt for McGucket forgetting his family, he did not appreciate the tone that made it sound like they’d merely interrupted his afternoon nap, and he was a little peeved about it.

“So what does that have to do with me?” Fiddleford arched an eyebrow.

Helen replied, “When we went back to my house, we were attacked by a man wearing the exact same robes as you were earlier. The red ones with the crossed-out eye.”

Realization suddenly washed across Fiddleford’s face. “No, they would never…” he muttered, more to himself than to Stan and Helen. “I…I taught them better than that…they know…”

“Who’s they?” Stan asked. He’d never been more confused in his life.

Fiddleford regarded him and Helen with the strangest of looks, a scrutinizing look, like he didn’t know whether or not they could handle a secret as big as the one he knew. 

“Fiddleford,” Helen said gently, “please tell us. Ford might need our help.”

“They wouldn’t hurt him, even if they did take him,” Fiddleford said, sounding surer of that than anything in his life. “They…that’s not what we do. We don’t…hurt people. We only help, and only if someone wants to be helped.”

“Who are you talking about?” Helen asked., trying to add enough urgency to get him to answer quickly.

“The Society of the Blind Eye,” Fiddleford finally said, looking up at them, almost with a sense of pride. “I created it. I wanted to help people. This town is full of monsters and creatures and other crazy stuff. It’s too much for them. I wanted to help them forget, so they could carry on with their lives, not having to worry about the…things in the woods.”

Stan blinked in confusion. That was not what he’d been expecting to come out of McGucket’s mouth. He looked over at Helen, who look just as confused. Maybe even a little afraid.

Fiddleford seemed to realize they were watching him so strangely, because he quickly added, “But only if they want to forget. We never force anyone. It’s only for the people it really bothers…” 

He trailed off, his eyes suddenly becoming very distant. For a brief moment, he seemed to be lost in a fog, an impenetrable haze. He suddenly squeezed his eyes shut and put a hand to his head, almost as if to soothe away pain. “Something like,” he murmured, “what happened to me…I think…I just…he wanted me to try and remember it…but I hid it away for a reason. I had to…I just…all I know is I couldn’t stand it anymore. All I wanted was to forget…”

The words gradually trailed off, as Fiddleford began to whimper a bit, and buried his face in his knees. Stan could hear him quietly muttering about forgetting. This was all getting grade-A creepy, very quickly. 

Helen took a cautious step towards Fiddleford, reaching out a hand in an attempt to calm him. Stan could tell that she didn’t really have it in her. Her steps were shaky and fearful. She was actually afraid of this small man trembling before her. Stan didn’t blame her. 

“Fiddleford,” Helen said gently, “when you say you help people forget, what exactly do you do?”

Fiddleford raised his head a bit, and Stan could see his eyes, bleary and full of tears. Despite them, there was a look of intense concentration on his face. He was trying very hard to bring forth those memories. 

Stan took back that accusatory thought of McGucket faking losing his memories. He found himself thinking back to 1973, at the hospital. He remembered Potts, a few days after his shock therapy. A few days after he stopped drooling on himself, people liked to mess with him by asking him basic questions - what’s your middle name, what day is it, how many months in a year - and watch poor Potts strain and struggle to summon forth the information. The volts they’d charged into his head boggled his brain. Remembering basic things like what state they were in was as difficult as trying to solve complex algebra. 

He couldn’t help but think back to that gun Helen had left lying on the floor downstairs. He wondered how it worked, if it was anything like the machine that had shocked Potts into a drooling stupor. 

Fiddleford finally let out a distressed whine, and muttered, “I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s buried too deep. I just can’t…”

Helen gently shushed him, and said, “That’s okay. We’ll think of a way to solve this.”

“Hang on,” Stan said, heading out the bedroom door and to the stairs. He heard Helen start to ask him a question, but she trailed off as he got further away. He saw the gun sitting near the bottom of the stairs, right where Helen had dropped it. It glinted a bit in the light of the front hall, and it made Stan shiver. When he reached the bottom step, he reached out and picked it up, and it felt cold in his hands. He wanted to toss it away, but he needed to see if this worked. 

When he came back into the bedroom, Fiddleford’s head had come even further out of his knees. Stan could actually see his nose a bit, the crooked glasses with tears drying a bit behind them. Sad desperation was now replaced by genuine curiosity. When she saw the gun, Helen gave him a very similar look.

Stan suddenly felt very nervous. He, who had survived as a swindler and hustler, doing dirty dealings with gangsters and thugs, suddenly felt very out of his element, simply trying to muddle his way through this weird turn of events that landed squarely in his lap. He wasn’t smart like Ford. He couldn’t look at a situation like a chessboard and deduce every move that was going to happen six turns before it did. He felt so uneasy, explaining what he thought of this situation, to two more people who were way smarter than he was or ever would be. Even though they were his friends, he found he almost preferred the gangsters. At least he didn’t care what gangsters thought of him.

Still, Helen and Fiddleford were staring at him in anticipation, so he just started talking. “The guy who attacked us at Helen’s house had this on him. I figured if you guys shared the robes, you might know what it is. It might help you remember.” He took a few cautious steps towards the bed, holding out the gun at arm’s length. 

Fiddleford did a few quick glances between the gun and Stan’s face. There was apprehension etched in his features. Stan tried his hardest to look small and contrite. It wasn’t hard when he kept reminding himself that Ford might need him.

He just had to keep thinking about Ford. 

Finally, Fiddleford, scooting closer to the end of the bed, reached out a shaky, bony hand, and took the gun from Stan. At first, he held it in his hands awkwardly, gently tracing his fingers down it, almost as if he were afraid the gun would explode if he handled it wrong. 

Tension hung in the air like heavy fog. Stan and Helen watched intently as Fiddleford studied the gun, and comprehension slowly bloomed across his face. His eyes suddenly lit up. Stan, for the first time, noticed they were a brilliant, friendly blue. Shirley Temple eyes, his mother would have called them; eyes that bring forth images of sweet innocence and kindness. 

“I built this,” Fiddleford whispered. “This is how we forget.” He stroked a finger down the bulb barrel. If Stan didn’t know any better, he’d swear Fiddleford was admiring his own handiwork.

“It’s not the original though,” Fiddleford continued, still in that soft, curious whisper. His eyebrows furrowed a bit in concentration. “These…they’re smaller than the original. Lightweight. I meant for them to be portable. In case something happened and the ritual couldn’t take place right away…”

“What ritual?” Helen asked. Stan could almost feel her trembling with anticipation beside him.

“To clear the mind,” Fiddleford replied distantly. “When someone wanted to forget, we would have the describe the memory, bring it to the forefront of their mind. Then we’d use the device to draw it out with an electric charge. It’s a bit like -”

“Shock therapy,” Stan said tersely. He suppressed another image of Potts staring out that window, and the shudder that inevitably came with it.

Fiddleford looked up at him, a look on his face that screamed for answers. Stan doubted the little nerd realized he knew what shock therapy even was. “I believe,” Fiddleford said, “it’s called electroshock therapy these days. But yes, the effects are similar.”

Stan huffed a little. He didn’t care what it was called. If something was even remotely similar to it, it was bad news to him.

Helen seemed to sense Stan’s growing agitation, and cut in, asking, “What did you mean this wasn’t the original? You mean there are more of these things out there?”

“Yes,” Fiddleford replied, still turning the gun over and over in his hands, studying it carefully. “The original is much more powerful. These smaller ones were meant to store only about an hour’s worth of memories, things that happened recently. The original can store anything, any amount of time. No matter what you want to forget, it can draw it out.”

“And you really think that’s helping people?” Stan asked, folding his arms over his chest. He was starting to sound angry, but frankly he didn’t care. 

“I _know it is_ ,” Fiddleford replied, irritation creeping into his tone as well. “The things in this town are dangerous. There are people here who can’t handle it. Sometimes they can’t cope.”

“So forcing them to forget is easier than, I dunno, actually teaching them to cope?”

“I’ve never forced anyone to go through with it,” Fiddleford shot back, raising his voice. It actually surprised Stan a little that the meek little hillbilly could raise his voice. “I have never once made a person forget against their will. Hence why your crazy brother still remembers all the insane things he trifles with.”

Stan felt a pulse of anger flow through him. “Leave Ford out of this, string bean. The only reason Ford is even mixed up in this now is because of you and that damn gun.”

“I beg to differ,” Fiddleford said sharply. “If it hadn’t been for your brother, I wouldn’t have had to start the society in the first place. As I told him, I may not remember what happened to me, but I do know it was his fault.”

Stan wanted to snap the haughty little twerp’s scrawny neck. Before he had time to stop himself, he shot out a hand, and grasped Fiddleford’s uninjured wrist as tightly as he could. He ignored when Fiddleford let out a sharp gasp of pain, and lost his grip on the gun. It fell from his hand and hit the edge of the bed before clattering to the floor. 

Helen stepped forward, opening his mouth to protest, but before she could speak, Stan hissed dangerously in Fiddleford’s face, “You’ve got no idea what my brother has been through since you scampered out of his life, you little coward. He was falling apart when I got here. And unlike you, he didn’t hide like a scared rabbit. He faces it every single day.”

He tightened his grip, pulling Fiddleford close to him, locking on to those bright blue eyes. They stared back at him, raw, primal fear in their depths. “In fact,” Stan growled, “since you guys were trying so hard to remember early, how about I finish what he started? Give ya a nice, big reminder. Let you know exactly what he’s got to deal with.”

With a powerful yank, Stan pulled Fiddleford the rest of the way off the bed. Fiddleford stumbled to keep himself upright as he was pulled along. Stan could feel him pull at the grip, trying to get Stan to release his wrist, but Stan wasn’t having it. Every time the other man got even a little bit of leeway, he’d just tug him back, tightening his grip. He was going to leave bruises on the bony, brittle wrist in his grasp. He didn’t care. 

He pulled Fiddleford along behind him, Helen following frantically. Stan heard her protest a few times about his rough treatment of Fiddleford, but Stan noticed she made no further efforts to stop him. He tried not to ruminate on that. She was probably just a little dazed from all this crazy crap going on. He didn’t blame her. 

But right now, he couldn’t allow himself to be dazed.

He dragged Fiddleford along behind him, down the stairs, and then across the entryway to the basement door. He flung it open, and a cool draft came rising out of it. It felt like they were entering the mouth to long-forgotten cave, where you weren’t one hundred percent sure that monsters didn’t still dwell in its depths. Stan only allowed himself a deep breath before giving Fiddelford’s wrist another sharp tug, and pulling him down into the dark basement. Helen hesitated at the top, but Stan quickly heard her sneakers pad down the stairs behind them. 

They finally reached the darkened control room for the portal. Stan groped a bit until he found the switch for the main lights in the open work area. He flipped it, and, one by one, the lights flickered to life, flooding the area with a pearlescent blue light. The portal looked even eerier now that Ford had been working on it some. Once a perfect triangular shape, it now resembled the manic, jagged grin of a lunatic, leering down at the trio through the observation window. I see you, it laughed mockingly at them. 

Stan momentarily felt a strong urge to turn tail and flee back up the stairs, never to gaze upon this behemoth monstrosity ever again, but when he felt Fiddleford give another frantic tug, Stan gave his head a solid shake, and kicked the control room door open. He gave Fiddleford another powerful tug, pulling the other man in front of him, and tossed him to the dirt. 

As Fiddleford pushed himself up on his knees, rubbing his now-bruise wrist gingerly, Stan came up next to him and, pointing up at the portal, said, “You know what this thing is? This is an interdimensional gateway. My brother built it, because a demon told him to. And for months, that triangle bastard tortured my brother so he’d help him bring about the end of the world. He wasn’t sleeping, could barely eat, and felt like he basically deserved to be alone for the rest of his life because of what he’d done.”

Stan turned sharply to face Fiddleford again. Fiddleford was staring up at him, obvious terror in his eyes. 

“Whatever happened to you might have happened because of Ford,” Stan continued, “but whatever that was, he’s more than paid for it because of this damn machine. He’s trying his damnedest to help you now. He might not be perfect, but he’s fucking _trying_. That’s got to mean something to you.”

Stan wanted to keep pressing Fiddleford until he finally got something other than looks of terror, but then, from the control room door, he heard Helen mutter under her breath, “Oh my fucking God…”

He looked over to her, and saw her looking up at the portal behind him, her arms hanging limply by her side. Her mouth was open in astonished awe. Her glasses had slid down her nose a bit, but she didn’t seem to notice. She looked positively thunderstruck. 

As if sensing Stan staring at her, Helen slowly, almost mechanically, turned her gaze down to meet his. Her eyes were wide. To Stan, she almost looked like a malfunctioning robot, an Asimov reject that was slowly beginning to break down. 

“Were you ever planning on telling me about this?” she asked. Her tone was low and dangerous. 

Stan shrugged, and said, “Honestly, we were kind of hoping that Ford would have it dismantled soon. So…not really.”

“Not really?” Stan could have sworn he saw Helen’s eye twitch. “You mean to tell me that your brother created a portal that could have _ended the fucking world_ and you didn’t think it was pertinent to tell me?!” She was shouting now. Stan was actually a little concerned. He’d never heard Helen so much as raise her voice to her children. 

“Ford didn’t think it was something you needed to know,” Stan said, putting his hands up in a placating gesture. “What good would it have done, anyway?”

“Hell if I know,” Helen shot back, “but at least it wouldn’t have been sprung on me after I’ve been through one of the craziest nights of my life! I’ve been attacked in my own home, had a gun pulled on me, a dear friend is missing, I’m dealing with a homeless mechanical genius who erases people’s memories, and I had to be in the same room as Leroy fucking Muggins for more than ten minutes! You think pulling this out of the woodwork is helping at all!?”

Well damn. Stan supposed she had a point. He really hadn’t thought about how she’d react to seeing the portal because he and Ford had never intended to let her know about it. Ford was already deeply ashamed of the project, and Stan was willing to keep the secret as long as he promised to get rid of it. 

“Look, Helen,” Stan said. “Maybe we should have told you about it sooner. But it’s not as big a deal as you’re making it out to be.”

“Stan, this isn’t about goddamn gnomes or unicorns or freaky things that show you your worst fear,” Helen cried. “You said this thing could have brought about the end of the damn world. You don’t think that deserves a big reaction?”

“Considering it’s not even on, and Ford is taking it apart? No, I don’t think so.”

“Well too fucking bad, because you’re getting one!”

Stan was about to shout something back - he really didn’t want to get into an argument right now, not when she was so upset, but he wasn’t exactly handling this insane night much better than she was - when he heard the sound of shifting earth. It drew his attention, and he realized that Fiddleford was getting to his feet. His eyes no longer held terror. He wasn’t even focused on Stan anymore. 

His attention was solely on the portal. Even Helen had calmed down, and was watching him slowly stand. 

Fiddleford’s legs were shaking as he took a step forward, towards the portal, but Stan didn’t see anything resembling fear left in his face. All he saw was dawning realization, the kind that came about when you finally discovered the answer to a riddle that had long been plaguing and frustrating you. 

Within a few steps, Fiddleford was less than a foot away from the portal. For a moment, all he did was stare, blue eyes tracing the broken-apart frame intently. 

Then, Stan saw Fiddleford raise his hand from his side. The action almost seemed to be in slow-motion, and Stan noticed that the other man’s hand was shaking as much as his legs. It still wasn’t fear, though. Stan almost thought it looked akin to excitement. 

Fiddleford’s hand was less than an inch away from the dark gray steel in front of him when he stopped, his hand hanging in midair. His fingers trembled, curling in slightly, indecision radiating off of him. He seemed to regard the portal as some kind of poison, and touching it would mean almost certain death. 

But finally, Stan saw Fiddleford set his mouth in a hard, determined line, and span his fingers out to touch the portal. He held his hand there for a long time, just feeling the metal under his fingers. He gently moved his hand around, comprehension slowly trickling into his features. His eyes went wide, and he stopped moving his hand. He was once again a million miles away from them, experiencing something Stan and Helen would never truly understand.

And then, Fiddleford spoke, his words like an explosion in the grim, dank silence - “When gravity falls and earth becomes sky, beware the beast with just one eye.”

Just as suddenly as he’d gotten to his feet, Fiddleford’s knees seemed to give out from under him. He slumped to the floor, the hand on the portal silently sliding down, back to his side. It hit the cold earth beneath him with a muted thud. He let his head fall forward a bit, leaned against the broken machine in front of him, piteous and tired. 

Agonizing silence hung between the three for several moments. To Stan, it felt like an eternity. He could barely stand it. 

Then he noticed that Fiddleford had closed his eyes. Not even just closed, but screwed shut, as if trying to block out an incredible pain, whether something physical or something that stirred deep inside his own mind, Stan couldn’t begin to guess. 

But as the moments stretched on into a minute, Stan began to worry. What was wrong with McGucket? Was he hurt? Had seeing the portal been too much for him? He prayed to whatever deity was listening that he hadn’t killed the little nerd. McGucket may have been equal parts pathetic and frustrating, but that didn’t mean he deserved to die.

He took a step closer to Fiddleford, hands out just a little, in case he needed to restrain or comfort or contain whatever explosive reaction he was sure there was bound to be. Quietly, cautiously, he said, “Are you okay, Fidds?”

As soon as the words left Stan’s mouth, Fiddleford’s eyes shot open. It may as well have been a crack of rattling thunder from the way it made Stan reel back. 

Fiddleford, however, began to move slowly, methodically. Stan could see in his eyes the same calculating brilliance he saw in Ford’s, when he had stumbled upon an answer that could make everything fall into place. Fiddleford turned to face Stan, and merely said, “I remember. It was all about this portal.”

Before Stan or Helen could ask what that was supposed to mean, Fiddleford added, urgently, “I need a tool box. And the memory gun. I need to know why I remember.”

Fiddleford paused for a moment, his eyes still burning with the fire of slow discovery, and Stan took the opportunity to ask, “Why do you need to know that now?”

Fiddleford got to his feet, staggering a bit. His legs almost seemed to be jellied, and Stan readied himself to rush forward if he took a dive to the floor. But he managed to hold himself upright, and turn towards Stan completely. He replied, “Because I just remembered that the effects of that gun were intended to be permanent. I shouldn’t be remembering this portal, because that’s why I wiped my memory in the first place. This is what drove me away.”

\--------------------

Blind Ivan was unhappy. His mouth was set firmly in a deep scowl of displeasure. Not that this was much different than how he normally looked, but tonight, there was reason behind it. 

Tonight, he was forced to listen to the incessant chatter of his followers, all twelve of them, arguing amongst themselves about everything that had befallen them within the last twelve hours or so. It was beginning to get rather tiresome.

“We can’t keep that interloper here!” cried one. “What if he draws those horrible creatures he studies here?”

“I’m not concerned about the creatures, I’m concerned about our leader,” grumbled another. “He’s been gone for so long…who knows what’s being done to him.”

“Our leader could have been returned to us hours ago if someone had done their job correctly,” snapped yet another, turning his gaze to look accusingly at a follower standing sheepishly behind him. Ivan knew for a fact that the sheepish man in question had been sent to the home of a female friend of the interloper, tasked with finding their leader. Not only had he turned up empty, but he hadn’t even successfully wiped their memories to make sure his tracks were covered.

“I didn’t expect the other man to be with her!” the sheepish man shot back, his voice quavering and nervous. “And my gun jammed! I could have fixed it if that other man hadn’t been there!”

“You’re just lucky I was there to clean up your mess,” his accuser shouted. “If anyone but me had responded to that woman’s call, we would have been found out for sure! You are responsible for most of the calamity that has befallen us!”

A murmur of annoyed agreement rippled through the small congregation. Ivan said nothing, but found himself siding against the bumbling follower who’d put them in jeopardy. When the bumbler looked up to him, and saw nothing but Ivan’s cold indifference, his face drained of most of its color. His eyes widened even more. He appeared to be gasping minutely for air. Ivan briefly thought he looked like a beached fish. He wondered if he was going to begin flopping around, shockingly finding himself unable to breath.

Instead, words eventually began pouring out of the nebbish little followers mouth once again, and he said, “But I was only sent to the woman’s house because that one didn’t take his opportunity to take our leader back when he had the chance.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of a follower standing off by himself, hunched over slightly, as if an enormous weight had been heaved firmly on his shoulders. The hunched follower turned his head slowly to face the rest of the congregation, not seeming to care about that he was being accused. 

The rest of the congregation merely stared back at the hunched follower. Ivan could hardly blame them. There was something…off-putting about the way the hunched follower looked at them all. Their gaze was far away. Burdened, but still very sharp and penetrating. It was the gaze of a person who had lost much, and was beginning to get to the point where they did not care anymore. Ivan made another mental note to speak to them when all this unpleasantness had finally been settled.

For now, he waited with his flock for the hunched follower to speak. After a few moments, the hunched follower heaved a sigh, and said, voice flat, “When I was with the leader, not only did I have to deal with the woman and the strange man, but also the interloper. Tell me,” the hunched follower said, turning their head in a slow, creaking manner, reminiscent of a rusted machine, towards their increasingly nervous accuser, “how I am supposed to do what my younger counterpart couldn’t, with three people to worry about instead of just one?”

Quiet fell over the group like a suffocating mound of dirt over a coffin. The nebbish follower even took a step further towards the edge of the group, probably hoping the darkness would swallow him up, if only to get him away from the dead, unsettling gaze of the hunched follower.

Ivan rolled his eyes. The spectacle had now officially lost its novelty. It was time to take charge, as he always had to.

Standing tall and erect, his deep voice boomed out in the silence, commanding and authoritative. “You all had your opportunity to rescue our leader,” he said, sweeping a withering gaze over his followers. All but the hunched man quickly looked away to avoid his gaze. Ivan ignored it and continued, “And you all failed. As much as I know having the interloper in our midst troubles you, now, he is our only hope to finding our glorious leader.”

“We can’t trust him,” a follower shouted back. Ivan noticed she did not look in his direction when she spoke. “He consorts with the demons in the forest. He would never help us! And even if he would, he has probably already sacrificed our leader to the horrible beasts!”

That sent a shot of panic through the congregation. They began to murmur in hushed tones to each other - what if it was true? What if they were already too late? What if the interloper was more powerful than they ever realized?

Ivan had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes again. There were days he wondered to himself why he put up with the superstitious nonsense his followers sometimes spewed forth. He’d found, from viewing the tubes, that much of it was true, but then there were times like this, when accusations were flung forth about various innocuous townsfolk being witches or warlocks and how they should track them down to burn at the stake. 

McGucket tended to handle such outbursts with calm words and peaceful conflict resolution. A neighbor probably wasn’t a warlock if all they did was argue the patch of crabgrass on the property line wasn’t theirs to deal with, after all. Or how a teenage daughter probably wasn’t a witch if she listened to music her parents didn’t understand, and therefore didn’t approve of. 

Ivan had quickly learned he had not the patience to deal with such ridiculousness. If it had been up to him, he would have merely wiped the childish notion out of a follower’s head and been done with it. He was thinking about doing that now. 

But they currently had a problem to deal with. One that involved the pathetic scientist locked up in a storage room in their very inner sanctum. 

Ivan spoke up again, silencing his followers’ mumbling immediately. “If the interloper were truly responsible for something like that,” he said, “I can assure you, he wouldn’t be keeping it any secret from us. He is afraid and vulnerable. He knows that we are getting closer to finding and retrieving our leader. We must find a way to draw his location out of him, and this arguing is not getting us anywhere.”

His followers looked at the floor in abject shame. It sent a thrill through Ivan he could not readily describe. 

“I know that it might take more time,” Ivan continued, “but I believe my current method of interrogation has proven effective. He is beginning to weaken. It will not be long before he tells us where he is hiding our dear leader. Only then may we destroy him, and anyone else who tried to stand in our way.”

The followers, whipped into a frenzy by the passionate declaration of the return of their leader, cheered. Despite their small numbers, it echoed loudly off the stone walls surrounding them. Ivan smiled a bit, and waved them off. As they trickled away, their hushed chatter now decidedly more positive, Ivan slipped off himself.

He had a destination in mind. 

As he walked, he felt the tingling twinges of a headache begin. Putting up with his follower’s nonsense was proving to be a bit more than he could handle. But he had to do it. It was his duty as McGucket’s second-in-command. 

At least, second-in-command for the time being. At least until he got Dr. Pines to finally admit he was hiding McGucket in that horrid little cabin. 

He’d known that was where their leader was sequestered since the nebbish follower had returned, his plan to find McGucket at the doctor’s home proving to be a giant failure. Honestly, there was no where else McGucket could have been. 

But Ivan also knew that none of his followers would go there on his word alone. He may have been acting as their leader in McGucket’s absence, but they still clung to McGucket’s ideals. And one thing McGucket feared more than anything was that cabin in the woods. Even if he didn’t understand why, he feared it, at the very core of his being. And, like the pliable sheep they were, his followers did too. 

If Dr. Pines finally “confessed” that’s where he was keeping McGucket, then Ivan knew his followers would conquer any and all fear they had to rescue their leader, and punish the interloper for dragging him to their own reimagining of hell. 

It was only a matter of forcing the good doctor to finally speak up.

Ivan reached the door he sought, and turned the knob. He entered a room filled with tubes, all labeled with names. There were not many yet, only about twenty or thirty, but he knew someday, they’d grow. As he exercised his influence over the people of this little town, he knew that it would grow. 

Perched upon a high shelf, sat the tube he wanted. Written in shaky black ink was “McGucket’s Memories”. 

As Ivan tucked the tube in his sleeve and left the room, he reminded himself that what he had planned was not torture. None of this was. To be sure, he’d lost his temper when Dr. Pines refused his initial request, but he promised himself that would not happen again. He would not raise a hand to their guest for the rest of his time here. 

What Ivan had planned was merely…persuasion. A glimpse into why their leader had started the society in the first place. And all of that was contained in this tube, prepared for Dr. Pines’ viewing pleasure. 

Of course, Ivan himself would be there to watch as Dr. Pines viewed the tube’s contents. He had to be. It was imperative he be there, in case Dr. Pines finally relented and told him what he wanted to know.

As Ivan descended the stairs to the inner sanctum once more, and headed down the darkened hall to the storage room, he repeated this mantra to himself - this was not torture. This was persuasion.

Not torture. Persuasion.

He ignored the excited trembling in his hands as he pulled the key to the storage room door from a small pouch on his belt. He pushed down the strange, tumultuous feeling in his stomach - which he’d heard once referred to as butterflies in the stomach - as he put the key in the lock and turned it. He fought the feeling of giddiness rising within him, making his head feel a little light.

Not torture. Persuasion.

The door swung open. Dr. Pines’ chair still lay on its side, the aforementioned doctor with it. He was no longer whimpering, as he had been when Ivan left him a few hours earlier. There was a brief flutter of disappointment, quickly replaced by the flush of giddiness when he noticed the small shivers wracking themselves through Dr. Pines’ body. Ivan paused a moment, to study the air around him. It was, indeed, quite frigid here. Damp too. He supposed that being unable to move in such a situation wasn’t lending well to the doctor staying warm. 

Ivan’s face twitched in a smile.

Not torture. Persuasion.

He walked over to the doctor’s overturned chair, and grabbed its back with both hands. The doctor was almost completely limp, and for a moment Ivan feared that he might have been unconscious. 

But no, he saw them, the clouded, unfocused depths of eyes the color of mud. They stared off at nothing. Ivan was pleased with that. Hopefully, this would be quick.

“I assume that your stance on telling me where our leader is hasn’t changed?” he asked.

Silence.

Ivan set his mouth in a stiff line, but there was no anger in him. “I thought not,” he said. “In that case, I feel it would be pertinent if I showed you something. Something that will make it very easy to understand why our leader needs to be returned to us.” As he spoke, he reached behind him, where a pair of square glasses with a cracked left lens sat on a table. He’d picked them up out of the alley when he’d struck Dr. Pines with the pipe. He thought they’d be important later. 

He picked them up, opened them, and carefully slid them on to Dr. Pines’ face. The doctor blinked hard a few times, his eyes moving about frantically, adjusting to suddenly being able to see again. Other than that, his face did not change. Ivan worried momentarily that the cracked lens would make it harder for the doctor to see what he was about to show him. Then he saw the doctor’s left eye was swelling up with a purple bruise Ivan had left him with. So much for that.

Ivan pulled the tube from his sleeves. He almost felt like twirling it between his fingers, like a silly coin trick. From a darkened corner, he pulled forth a dusty viewing screen. A back-up, in case the one in the main area ever decided to fritz. It was perfect for his own needs. 

He cast one more look over his shoulder at Dr. Pines. Something akin to defiance had set itself in those muddy eyes. _Do your worst,_ they said. _I won’t give him back._

Ivan didn’t suppress the smile this time as he plug the tube into its proper node. The screen flickered with static for a moment, before the picture finally settled. His leader, clean and unassuming, stared back at him. Ivan stepped aside, letting Dr. Pines take in the image of himself.

The image spoke - “My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I wish to unsee what I have seen.”

Ivan watched with relish as the defiance died in Pines’ eyes. It was quickly replaced with defeat.

Persuading him would not take long at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow...two months without an update. Sorry about that. Real life happened and this fic just...got away from me. Hopefully, the chapter itself made up for it. Also hopefully the next chapter won't take as long, but I make no promises.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *rises from the ashes* I LIIIIIIIIVE. 
> 
> I am so sorry this took so long, guys. Real life and other fandoms just shoved their way into my life and I couldn't keep up with this. But now I'm back, hopefully to finally put this baby to rest in the next couple of months. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for this chapter: torture, discussions of death, and mentions of a suicide attempt.

“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”  
Rudyard Kipling

\--------------------

Helen wanted a nap. And a drink. And mostly a puzzle.

Her head buzzed with pain and agitation, and she wanted to curl into a ball and have it be this morning again. She would have slept through the ringing phone, ripped it out of the wall if she had to, and gone back to sleep. She would not have woken up until the kids needed to be picked up Monday evening.

Tonight had, in no small words, been a nightmare. She didn’t need this right now. She didn’t want to be reduced to the hysterical woman, screaming and fainting and drowning in her own angst, but it was very hard not to fall into the pattern. Being attacked in her own home, an obviously-brewing conspiracy, and now a world-ending portal? All with Muggins’ stupid comments sprinkled on top?

God, she really wished she’d packed a puzzle. Her fingers twitched with the anxious need. Even a measly 100-piece one would have sufficed right now.

Rain began to pelt the side of the house. Thunder rumbled outside, announcing the strengthening storm. A gust of wind rattled the bare branches of the trees, making the rain slap against the wooden walls of the cabin harder. It was going to be a bad one.

She heard Stan come up next to where she sat on the couch, looking off at nothing. Every step he took was nervous. Ever since Fiddleford had gotten his desired toolbox and scampered off upstairs to tinker with the gun, Stan’s entire attitude toward her had changed.

Where he’d been flippantly dismissive of the portal and her reaction to it when she’d first seen it and subsequently freaked out, now he edged around her like she was a ticking time bomb. She supposed, in a way, she was. Her entire body felt wound too tightly, and her head radiated with painful heat.

Stan hadn’t spoken a word to her since she’d sat down sat down, pointedly looking away from him, and she preferred it that way. She wondered how much he knew about that odd portal downstairs. How much had Ford shared with his brother about it? The basics and nothing more? Or did Stan know exactly how much hell his brother had been through because of the portal?

Another bolt of pain flared, right behind her eyes. She pulled her glasses off, tossed them down to the other end of the couch, and put her head in her knees. The headache was making her slightly nauseous. She hadn’t felt this way in quite some time.

She felt something cold being pressed to the side of her head. It was amazing, and she wanted to let it sit there forever and ever.

Looking up, she saw Stan there, holding out a frosty can of beer. He held another, presumably for himself, in his other hand. His face reminded her of Scott’s, specifically the day he’d failed a huge math test and was thinking of a million and one ways to beg his mother’s forgiveness.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. She lifted her head the rest of the way out of her knees and took the beer. She pressed it against her forehead, then let her eyes slide shut as the cold, wet tin soothed away the worst of the pain. It was almost enough to put her to sleep.

“Not exactly the medicinal purpose I had in mind for that,” Stan joked weakly. Silence hung between them as he waited for her to joke back. She said nothing, just opened her eyes and looked at him blankly. The failed-math-test look deepened, and he said, “Ya know, I can get you some ice or something, if you need it.”

“This is fine,” she replied. She was being standoffish, but she had no energy for anything else.

Stan shifted nervously, looking at the floor. The beer hung limply by his side, and he fiddled with the tab with his thumb. He looked very much like he didn’t belong. 

And that just made Helen feel like garbage. This was Stan’s home, and she was making him feel like he didn’t belong there. Stan and Ford had told her in very brief detail about their father’s cruel punishment when Stan was a teenager, but she didn’t need much to understand two things about it.

One: if she ever met their sorry excuse for a father, she was going to deck him right in his stupid face.

Two: that, even though Stan shrugged and waved off his time on the street, it still bothered him. It hung around him some days, oppressive and heavy. There was a fear there when it did - fear of being cast out again, of what he considered family turning on him and leaving him a second time. And Helen never wanted anyone to feel like that in her presence, least of all Stan. She liked him too much to ever be the one to make him feel like he wasn’t wanted. 

She heaved a heavy sigh, and said, “I’m sorry, Stan. I don’t mean to be this way. I just -”

Stan seemed to relax immensely, and smiled a bit. “Don’t apologize,” he said, finally raising his beer and snapping the tab. “You’ve had a crazy night. Not the least of which is helped by that hunk of junk in the basement.”

Helen felt a heat rise to her cheeks, and didn't reply right away. There was that “hysterical, fainting woman” thing screaming in her head again. It made her feel burdensome, dainty, useless. She knew that, compared to the likes of Ford, Stan, and even Fiddleford, she was woefully inexperienced with the unusual. She’d experienced it, to be sure, and it had left its mark on her, body and soul. But, by comparison, her small, paltry scratches were nothing compared to the scars her friends bore. She felt like the swooning heroine on the poster for a sci-fi B-movie, a shrieking load with nothing helpful to offer. She never wanted to be that afraid.

Her rational side knew that Stan didn’t mean to imply anything. He was only trying to be nice. But her rational side was also very, very tired, and not willing to put up much of a fight.

She decided that the soothing buzz of alcohol sounded pretty good right now. One beer certainly wouldn't be able to do it for her, but she was certain there was more stashed in the Pines brothers’ fridge. She popped the tab, and tipped it back into her mouth. The beer was cheap, and tasted bitter going down. But once it hit her stomach, the comforting warmth spread like the embrace of an old friend. The sensation of wanting to burp filled her. It felt nice, and she was relieved to find it taking more of the edge off her headache. 

When she lowered her head again, a slightly fuzzy Stan was staring at her. She had to think for a second before remembering that she took off her glasses. She leaned forward and started pawing around for them. “One of the many trials of the bespectacled,” she mumbled. “Lose your glasses, but you can’t see to find your glasses. You see my problem.”

“You can’t even see your problem,” Stan said without missing a beat.

Helen couldn’t stop the barking laugh that escaped her, and it shook her so much that she nearly lost her grip on her beer. She found that it felt so very good to laugh. Easy too. Maybe this beer was stronger than she gave it credit for.

Stan chuckled beside her, and walked to the end of the couch, picking up her glasses, all but invisible against the dark fabric of the couch. He held them out to her, and she quickly took them and slid them on her face. “Thanks,” she said. “Now you’re less fuzzy.”

“Welcome,” Stan said. He settled himself down on the end of the couch. Helen noticed he was a lot less rigid than when he’d first come back in. “You’d think, being bespectacled and all, you’d manage to keep better track of those things. Maybe you need one of those old lady chains to hold them on.”

“I’m only forty, Stan. Let me retain my dignity for another ten years, at least.”

Stan chuckled again, popped the tab on his beer, and took a swig. A strange look passed over his face. “Ford does that kind of stuff all the time. Has ever since we were kids. Sets them down, forgets where. Or puts them on top of his head, and spends twenty minutes tearing the house apart trying to find them. I give him all kinds of hell for it. I’ve have more than one book thrown at me because of the bad glasses puns.”

Stan trailed off, staring down at the can in his hands. Concern tugged at his features. Helen felt an empathetic lurch in her stomach. The rain picked up, followed by another rumble of thunder.

There had still been no word from Ford, and with this storm, it wasn’t safe for any of them to go out and look for him. Stan had tried to remain calm about the whole situation, but Helen knew that he was very, very close to falling apart.

But they could only keep hoping that Ford was okay, and would contact them soon. Outside, the rain lessened, but a stronger, louder crash of thunder filled the void. The storm would not let up for some time. Stan tightened his grasp on his beer. Helen could see the sides denting in from the force of it.

She reached out a hand, and gently set it on Stan’s hand. She said, “Stan, I’m sure he’s okay. Ford has faced a whole mess of weird shit coming out of that forest. Whatever is happening to him now, I’m sure he’s fine.”

Stan looked up at her, and Helen could tell he did not believe her. His eyes remained a steadfast beacon of brotherly love and concern. But he smiled at her, just to placate her, she knew. She had to take his mind off things. She looked around the room, hoping to find something, anything, to talk about, to distract him. Maybe, in a way, distract herself from her own nagging thoughts.

She saw a stack of books on the floor, tucked away at the side of the couch. Library books, it seemed, from the white sticker on the spine. Tucking her beer between her legs, she pulled the stack closer, so she could look through it. A Stephen King sat on top. Definitely not interested, thanks. She’d had nightmares for a week when, at age seventeen, Henry Stickler took her to see The Tingler at the movies. He’d been hoping that she’d cuddle up to him during the scary parts so he could heroically comfort her. What he’d gotten was her bashing him right in the face with her purse when Vincent Price warned them the Tingler was loose in the theater, and her seat began to jolt. 

She’d obviously been adverse to horror fiction ever since. She moved the King aside, and looked at the rest. 

The next was _The Haunting of Hill House_ by Shirley Jackson. Pass. 

_Something Wicked This Way Comes_ by Ray Bradbury. Dammit, didn’t Stan ever want to read something pleasant?

The final book in the stack was, if anything, the one that confused her the most - Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath. She picked it up, eyebrow arched. It seemed to get Stan’s attention, and he looked over at her.

She opened the book and thumbed through a few pages, saying offhandedly to Stan, “You don’t strike me as a poetry type of guy, let alone Sylvia Plath.”

“I read Ariel a few years ago,” he said. He took another long swig of beer. Helen suddenly remembered what that chilly sensation between her legs was, and brought her own beer up for another drink. “Back when I was still on my own. Friend of mine introduced us. At the time, the anger spoke to me. Especially “Daddy”. You can probably guess why.” Another long drink of beer, this time with heavy gulps.

Helen nodded, and quickly changed the subject. “I read _The Bell Jar_ when I was a senior in college. My roommate actually wrote my parents because she thought I was suicidal. They drove five hours to make sure I was still breathing.” She knew that was a stupid thing to say as a silly anecdote, and yet it’d tumbled tumbled out of her mouth anyway. She supposed she was distracted by the warm, slushy feeling in her belly caused by the beer. She took another drink, to add to it.

“There’s more to her than the anger and the suicide,” Stan said. Helen was actually pretty surprised at how firm his tone was. “She’s intense, but she’s focused, and she can write about a lot of issues that hardly any poets like talking about.

Helen couldn’t stop staring. he recalled earlier, when Stan had mentioned Ford thinking of him as the guy for the heavy lifting. She couldn’t imagine Ford or Stan ever being more wrong in their lives.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sharp trill of the phone, so loud, even when battling against the storm outside, it made Helen and Stan nearly jump out of their skin. Stan even lost his grip on his beer, and it nearly fell to the floor. He managed to grab it before it sailed too far away.

As soon as Stan got his bearings back, he leapt to his feet, and jogged to the kitchen. Helen felt good for him. It was probably Ford, calling to say he was trying to head back, but the rain was just too heavy. He was probably sitting in a booth at Greasy’s, waiting for it to pass before heading back home, safe and sound.

Helen thumbed through the book while she waited for Stan to come back, deflated and heavy with relief. She scanned some of the poems briefly. She thought vaguely that she needed to check this book out when Stan returned it. She hadn’t returned to Plath after the embarrassing incident with her parents rushing up to her school. Maybe it was time to change that. 

“Yeah, she is, hang on,” Helen heard Stan say from the kitchen. She lifted her head, curiosity piqued. Was Ford asking about her? She wondered why. A petty, silly part of her (probably more than a little effected by the beer; how strong was this stuff anyway?) hoped he just wanted to tell her that he was sorry for swiping her car, and he’d wash it for her if she wanted.

She heard Stan walking back to the living room, and turned to him. He looked decidedly dejected. When he looked up at Helen, his eyes were red, betraying the fact he was ready to fall to pieces, cry out of sheer frustration. Guilt surged through her as he said, “It’s Daisy. She wants to talk to you.”

Confusion mixed with the guilt as Helen got up from the couch, setting her beer off to the side where it wouldn't be kicked over. She flicked a glance up at the clock on the wall. It was half past eleven, and generally, her children were in bed by now. It was one of the few things none of the kids had ever fought her on, Daisy especially. Unlike most teenagers, Daisy wasn’t rebelling or trying to buck her mother’s authority by disregarding a childish bedtime. If anything, Daisy couldn’t get to bed soon enough. She loved to sleep. She took naps whenever she could, and went to bed early on school nights, knowing that going to sleep around ten-thirty meant the maximum amount of sleep possible before her alarm went off at six. It was one of the many things Helen smirked about when discussing the perils and pratfalls of motherhood with her PTA friends.

She walked towards the kitchen, trying her damnedest to ignore Stan throwing himself sullenly against the couch, disappointment practically radiating off him. At the same time, she figured Daisy wouldn’t risk long distance charges to Michael’s credit card (not that he was hurting, but she was sure he wouldn’t appreciate it) if this was just calling to say hello. Her maternal instincts for her flesh and blood overruled those for her friend, no matter how upset he was at the moment.

Stan had left the phone laying face up on the kitchen table. Helen picked it up, trying not to think too hard about the fact it stuck to the formica a little. She really needed to remind the Pines  
brothers to clean up after themselves more often. Then she shoved that thought to the back of her head, knowing Stan really wouldn’t want to hear it right now.

She held the phone to her ear and said, “Daisy?”

“Hi, Mom.” Her daughter sounded like she was lounging, and hadn’t a care at all in the world, but her voice was soft, like she was trying very hard not to be quiet and not wake anyone.

“Hi, sweetie. Everything alright?”

“Yeah, everything’s great. I’m super exhausted though. We went to the marina and Michael took us on his boat. I had to stop Amanda from trying to carry every fish she saw home in a bucket. She thought you’d like that as a souvenir.”

Helen forced a chuckle, even though the questions on her tongue were slowly but surely chipping their way forward. A beat of silence stretched between them.

Daisy suddenly spoke up again, “Before you ask how I knew where to call, I already tried calling the house. When you didn’t pick up, I figured you were with the Wonder Twins.”

This time, Helen chuckled in earnest. “Yeah, it was getting kind of lonely around the house,” she lied, thinking only for a moment about how easily it rolled off her tongue. “I think I may actually be getting used to the three of you running around like crazies.”

Daisy laughed a little.Or rather, released a burst of hot air from her nose that was supposed to constitute a laugh. Helen knew she was smirking too. Very distinctly Daisy.

“So,” Helen continued nonchalantly, ignoring the part of her that told her to hurry up, stop tying up the line, Stan was worried enough as it was, “does Michael know he’s going to be receiving some bills for a long-distance call his niece made when she should have been asleep?”

She could practically feel Daisy’s eyes rolling through the phone. “Chill out, Mom. Uncle Mike said we can use the phone whenever we need. A call home is totally cool with him.”

Another beat of silence.

“Besides,” Daisy added quickly, her voice suddenly very strange, “He got really badly sunburned, so he’s sleeping that off. And let me tell you, sunburn comas make a person sleep like a rock. You’d think, living in San Francisco, he’d be, like, immune to sunburns by now, or something.”

“I see,” Helen said. She felt something akin to anxiety churn in her gut. The way Daisy spoke, and the phone call from out of the blue, while everyone was asleep. She had to know. “So, to what do I owe this late night phone call? It’s almost midnight. I figured you’d be asleep by now and wouldn’t be awake for another twelve hours.”

Yet another beat of silence. Helen could picture Daisy on the other end of the line, nervously biting her lip. That was holdover from her childhood, something she always did when she had something unpleasant on her mind. 

“Sweetie?” Helen said gently. “Is something wrong?”

“I guess I wouldn’t really say wrong, exactly,” Daisy replied slowly. “I just wanted to make sure, ya know, that you were okay. Ya know, by yourself.”

“Oh hon, I was just kidding about being lonely,” Helen said, feeling a heat rise to her cheeks. She certainly didn’t want to come off as clingy and protective as her own mother. “I’ve got the Tweedles to keep me company.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Daisy said, her voice almost stern. It made Helen’s gut tighten again. 

“Well, what did you mean?” she asked. 

Daisy took a deep breath, and said, “Next Saturday, it’ll have been two years.”

A low rumble of thunder shook the floor under Helen’s feet as realization dawned on her. All she could manage was a soft, almost whispered, “Oh.”

“I wanted to talk to you about it alone,” Daisy continued. “I didn’t want Scott or Amanda to get upset. I mean, last year, it was kind of a mess.”

“I wouldn’t call it a mess - “ Helen offered weakly.

“You called out of work,” Daisy replied. It made Helen feel as though she were the chastened teenager here, answering to a mother who was only concerned and wanted to help. And how wrong was that?

“Amanda almost got sent home because she was so worried about you. Gave herself indigestion,” Daisy continued. Helen could tell her daughter was not trying to make her feel guilty. She spoke plainly, just stating the facts as they’d occurred. “But she thought that having to pick her up would just make you sadder, so she told her teacher she was okay.”

She wanted to say that she would have been fine if Amanda had come home early. When she’d come home at three-thirty on the bus, like usual, and complained of a sour stomach, hadn’t Helen immediately leapt to her child’s aid, offering her antacids and water and a gentle tucking into bed early?

She had. But a small part of her knew that Daisy was right too. At the time, she probably wouldn’t have handled Amanda coming home early very well. She’d been too busy being the hysterical woman. Wallowing. Feeling sorry for herself.

Helen’s gut clenched again, this time in disgust at her own weakness. She almost missed Daisy speaking up again.

“I’m sorry to bring up this painful stuff again, Mom,” Daisy said. She sounded so sincere, so guilty. Helen wanted to hug that feeling out of her. A fourteen-year-old girl should not be having that feeling towards her own mother.

“I just want to avoid all that again,” Daisy continued. Her voice was becoming very small. She sounded several years younger than she was. “Not just for Scott and Amanda.”

The “and me” remained unspoken, but Helen knew it was there.

“I just want you to be okay,” Daisy said. Her breath was somewhat labored, like saying those words was the emotional equivalent of sprinting a great distance. “I felt so scummy taking this trip without you.”

It was Helen’s turn to interrupt. “Daisy Jane, don’t you dare say that. You have nothing to feel guilty about, alright?”

Daisy didn’t reply.

Helen sighed a little and said, “I appreciate your concern, sweetheart. And I’m not going to deny that, yeah, last year was rough. But everything was still fresh. Wounds that haven’t healed yet are easy to agitate and get bleeding again, know what I mean?”

Daisy offered a weak, “Yeah.”

“But things are getting better all the time, Daze,” Helen said. “ _I’m_ getting better all the time. I’ve found ways of coping. And I owe a lot of that to you and your brother and your sister. I wouldn’t be where I am now if it weren’t for you guys.”

Daisy sniffled a little. If she started crying, Helen knew she would too. She had seen a great deal of death during her time at the hospital, and had pretty well learned to control her emotions in that setting of disease and loss and pain. But if one of her children cried in her presence, Helen fell apart. She cried right along with them, until they both were out of tears to shed.

And she’d had enough of that two years ago to last her a lifetime. 

Helen swallowed thickly, pushing back the heat that flushed her face, and said, “Hey, listen. You know what we’re gonna do?”

“Hmm?” was all Daisy offered. It was weak and tight with impending tears.

“Next Saturday, the four of us are going to have a day of nothing but fun,” Helen replied. “We’re gonna go to the mall, and we’ll go to any store you guys want. I’ll buy you all something, whatever you want. We’re gonna splurge like crazy. Make your grandma cluck her tongue at our extravagance.”

Daisy gave a small chuckle. Helen could practically hear a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Helen continued, “And then, after we’ve bought out the mall, we’re gonna go to whatever restaurant you guys want. Somewhere delicious and terrible for us. We’re going to eat and drink and repeat until we can barely move. We’re going to have so much fun, we’re going to forget why that day is supposed to be sad. Deal?”

Daisy sniffed, drying her tears, and said, “Deal.”

Helen’s gut finally loosened, allowing relief to flood through her. “Good,” she breathed. “Great.”

Another beat of silence passed between them. There seemed to be something a lot less painful in this one, something calm and accepting. It almost made Helen forget everything that had happened throughout the day. About the current clusterfuck that was her life. About the fact her friend was missing, and his brother was on the verge of an anxiety-induced aneurysm because of it.

All that mattered right now was her, and her baby.

The amicable silence was broken by Daisy suddenly letting out a long, loud yawn.

Helen smiled a bit and said, “Hey, little girl, it’s almost midnight. I think you need to get some sleep.”

“I guess,” Daisy mumbled, her response heavy and tired. “You’re sure you’re okay though?”

“I’m positive, sweetheart.”

“Kay,” Daisy answered lazily. Helen heard leather groan in the background, from Michael’s loveseat, overlooking his ocean view. Daisy suddenly spoke again, her voice slightly more alert than a few moments ago. “I forgot to ask,” she said. “Do any good puzzles lately?”

Before Helen could answer, she was alerted to the sound of someone running, directly above her head, somewhere on the second floor. Fiddleford was rushing down the steps, panting in excitement. Helen saw him stumble into the hallway, looking around, looking like he was ready to burst with the news he had.

Helen turned her attention back to the phone and said, “Yeah, I’m actually working on one right now. Hardest one I’ve ever done.” She flicked a glance over at Fiddleford, who’d finally caught sight of her, and looked practically sheepish for creating a stir during her conversation. He even shuffled his feet a bit.

“Okay,” Daisy said, the words almost swallowed up in another yawn. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Goodnight, Mom.”

“Goodnight, honey.”

“Oh, and Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Daisy.”

And then the line was dead.

Helen hung the phone back on the wall, and wished to God that there had been more time. She knew that her children would only be gone a few more days, but she found herself wanting now more than ever to just scoop them up in her arms and never let them go.

Was she doing the right thing, allowing herself to get mixed up in the Pines brothers’ escapades? It was fine when it was just gnomes and other harmless things. But now things were serious. Very serious. Missing persons and possible kidnapping and grievous bodily harm serious.

This wasn’t just the hysterical woman talking now. This was her own grounded worry, clear and sharp through a mother’s lens. She didn’t want to give her children anymore reason to worry about her. 

She was their mother. Worrying for them was her job.

She heard Stan speak up then, addressing Fiddleford. “What’s the ruckus, little man?” Even though Stan was trying to be familiar, casual, like he didn’t have a care in the world, it fell flat. His voice was still stretched thin, indicative of a man ready to burst.

Fiddleford either didn’t notice, or didn’t care, lost in his own excitement and achievement as he was. He looked up at Helen with what could only be described as unbridled glee, and motioned for Helen to follow. “You won’t believe this,” he said, beginning to walk towards the living room. “I figured it out.”

Taking a deep breath, Helen followed. She hoped her beer was still cold.

She really wished she had brought a puzzle.  
\------------

Ford flinched as the gun in the video went off again. Even the small movement made his aching head throb. 

This was the third time he’d seen his friend completely destroy his mind, bit by bit, in a vain attempt to save himself from the horrors he’d faced. 

Horrors Ford had foisted on him. 

Three times, Ford’s traitorous mind chanted _your fault your fault all your fault_. 

His stomach lurched with guilt. His eyes involuntarily began to mist, hot tears fogging his cracked glasses. Pain dealt by an angry boot lit his entire body on fire. 

Ropes bit into his wrists and ankles, even as he sat stock still, watching his friend’s life crumble over and over and over again. These ropes made his brain belch up memories of a knife at his palm. Of the bottom of the stairs, and not remembering how he got there. Those ropes, more than anything, made him think of Bill. And thinking of Bill - the possibility that he was there, still hiding in the darkest corners of his mind, laughing at him - made him want to crawl into a hole and die. 

Ford felt Ivan squeeze his shoulder, tightly, in a warning. There were always more bones to crack. Always more flesh to bruise. More wounds to inflict, inside and out. 

The video of the memories ended once again, Fiddleford’s small, broken body pausing as he held the gun to his temple, ready to fire. Fiddleford’s desperate gaze met Ford’s.

With the memories stopped, another wave of guilt crashed over Ford. He slumped forward a bit, wanting to cry or maybe vomit. Ivan tightening his grip on his shoulder was the only thing that kept him somewhat grounded. 

A beat of silence passed, oppressive and suffocating. When Ivan spoke, it was like a freshly-sharpened blade had sliced through the air. “You know what you need to do to make this stop, Dr. Pines,” he said. His tight, threatening grip never wavered for a moment.

Ford knew very well what he had to do. Ivan wanted Fiddleford. It would be so easy. Four words and Ivan would grant him his freedom. That would be the end of it if he just said one thing. 

_Come on, sixer. Hasn’t that bumpkin caused you enough pain already?_

The taunting thought came from a place in Ford didn’t recognize. A dark, angry, tired place that demanded respite. He’d suffered enough, it told him. Let someone else suffer for once. Some mistakes you just can’t fix. Just give up Fiddleford, and he could go back to his life. Go back to healing. His brother was waiting for him. He was already dealing with one mess he’d caused. Why pile more on himself? To feel like some kind of martyr? To punish himself? 

And then his mind would latch on to that and scream again _punish punish you must suffer this is all your fault your fault ALL YOUR FAULT_.

“You are shaking, doctor.”

Ford’s eyes shot open. He didn’t even remember shutting them. He cast a glance down at his hands. Ivan was right. They trembled under the ropes, sending tremors up his entire body. 

“You’re exhausted, Dr. Pines,” Ivan said. He lazily let his hand fall from Ford’s shoulder. Surprisingly sharp fingernails dug into his arm as Ivan moved in front of Ford, blocking the frozen image of Fiddleford. He leaned down, reached out, and cupped Ford’s chin in his hand. He raised Ford’s heavy head to look him in the face. Ford found himself oddly focused on the red, filmed-over eye that seemed to bore into his skull. 

“I can make this end,” Ivan said softly. “All I need is McGucket.” 

Ford felt his lips fall apart, ready to let words trickle forth. He was just so tired.

The screen on the monitor flickered, drawing Ford’s eye. He was once again locked with the image of his friend - Fiddleford McGucket, brilliant, kind, good, so much better than Ford deserved, reducing himself to a mocking parody. 

Fiddleford deserved better than Ford as his friend. But he also deserved help. And Ivan and this mad cult was not who was going to give it to him. 

Ford brought his gaze back to Ivan. There was a certain triumphant smugness in Ivan’s face. It was like staring into the face of a hungry mountain lion that knew it had its prey trapped. A fire rose up in Ford’s belly, drowning the guilt and the pain and the desperation for a brief moment.

He hated this son of a bitch.

“No,” Ford croaked.

Ivan’s eyes widened ever so slightly. Ford would have mirrored that smug smirk himself if just thinking about smiling didn’t make his face hurt.

Ivan sighed and straightened himself up. It was in that instance that Ford knew what was coming, and began to brace himself. Ivan had beaten him once when Ford had refused him. There was no reason to think it wouldn’t happen again. Despite looking so sickly and thin, Ivan was surprisingly strong. A pain shot through Ford at the mere thought of Ivan’s foot coming down on his rib cage again. 

Ivan began to move his hands. Ford screwed his eyes shut, preparing to be struck.

He heard Ivan clap his hands together. Cracking open his eyes, Ford saw that Ivan had indeed clasped his hands together in front of him, with a strange look on his face. Ivan almost looked...excited. Like a tour guide, showing off priceless antiquities to the ignorant public, hoping to educate them. The expression Ivan now wore wasn’t the smug grin or the calm smirk. It was a full-toothed smile, and it was just so...plastic. Wrong.

It sent a shiver down Ford’s spine. 

“If that is your decision, Dr. Pines,” Ivan said, a chilling eagerness in his voice, “then I suppose we shall simply have to watch the memories again.”

Before Ford could even begin to react, Ivan’s hand shot out, clamping down around the ropes that bound Ford’s right wrist to the chair. Ivan inched his hand down, until he grasped Ford’s index finger. 

Then he pulled the finger backwards. Ford let out a cry of shock when pain shot through him again.

“And this time,” Ivan said, a sinister edge creeping into his voice, his eyes wide and wild, “for every minute of footage that goes by, and you say nothing, I shall snap one of your fingers. You have twelve, Dr. Pines. Do you think you can hold out for twelve more minutes?” Ivan punctuated the question by pulling Ford’s finger back further. Ford let out a gasp of pain and he felt muscles tighten, joints grind. He couldn’t take this.

There was a knock at the door.

Ivan stopped pulling, but didn’t release Ford’s finger right away, even as Ford gasped and tried to wriggle it out of his grasp. 

Finally, letting out a sigh reminiscent of a perturbed teenager, Ivan rolled his eyes, released Ford’s fingers, and put his hood back up. Then he walked over to the door and opened it. 

Another hooded figure stood there, bowed their head slightly. “Sir,” they said. “There is a matter than needs your attending.”

“Can’t it wait?” Ivan barked. “I am in the middle of something.”

“Another argument has broken out. I fear things will escalate unless you calm things down.”

Ivan muttered something under his breath Ford didn’t bother trying to decipher. Then he spoke to the hooded follower at the door. “Stay here with the interloper,” Ivan commanded. 

The hooded figure nodded, stepping into the room quickly enough to let Ivan flounce out of the room, robe billowing behind him. He pulled the door shut with a deafening, angry slam. The hooded figure now in the room with Ford barely moved at the heavy thud. 

As the pain faded in his finger, Ford looked up at this new figure before him. They had a short and stout built, and, like the others he’d seen, their face was completely shrouded by their hood. Even so, as the figure stood there in silence, Ford could feel their eyes trained on him. 

Ivan had mentioned his followers hated Ford. And now he was stuck with one. He felt his heart rate pick up, pounding in his ears as he tried to prepare himself for the pain. 

Maybe he would have been better off with Ivan.

The follower began to move towards him. Ford couldn’t help but let out a tiny whimper as he ducked his head and tried to think of anything else but what was about to happen.

A gentle hand touched the back of his head, fingers ghosting over the wound left by the blow Ford had received. The figure let out a low noise in their throat, almost like consideration. Then they pressed, very lightly, on the blood-crusted hair and down against the flesh of his skull. It felt like a hammer had been slammed into the base of his neck, and he couldn’t help but yelp loudly, jerking his head a bit to get away from the thing causing him pain.

“Sorry,” Ford heard the figure say softly. He felt the hands leave his head immediately. One of them rested on his hand, his right one. The one with the fingers Ivan had tried to snap. He instinctively curled his fingers into a fist, trying to protect them. 

The hand pulled away, and Ford could almost feel the shame in it. “Oh no,” the figure breathed. “No, it’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to see. Is that okay?”

The hand was suddenly back, gently squeezing the fist Ford had made. It was placating, reassuring, comforting. The touch of a parent soothing a child. 

Ford cracked open his eyes. The figure’s hand was still there, still squeezing. “Don’t be afraid,” the figure said. “I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

He couldn’t help himself. A long, keening cry burst forth. After hours of nothing but torment and pain, this gentle touch, the kind words, they were like being doused with cold water. He felt hot tears brimming again, didn’t care that they fogged up his glasses and left him blind. More ragged sobs escaped him as he let his head loll forward.

Gentle fingers brushed the hair away from his face, then smoothed it back into place. The hooded follower was actually petting Ford’s head. In between sobs, Ford heard soft, soothing nonsense being muttered to him, telling him it’d be alright, he was okay, he was safe for the time being. 

He didn’t even really have it in him to be confused. He just wanted to relish in the touch forever. 

The figure continued to pet his head until he began to calm down a little, which must have at least been another several minutes. Finally, as he hiccuped and sniffed, the figure said, “You need to tell him what he wants to know.”

Ford lifted his head up a fraction, and let out a tiny, “What?”

“Ivan. When he comes back, you need to tell him where Fiddleford is. He won’t stop until you do.”

“I c-can’t,” Ford stammered out, trying to sound less like a frightened child. He didn’t succeed. “He...he can’t...Fiddleford needs help.”

“I know,” the follower said. Ford was almost shocked the frankness of the response. “And I know Ivan is a madman that can’t give him that help. But that’s precisely why you need to tell Ivan what he wants to know.”

“But I can’t-”

“If you don’t, he’ll keep going until he kills you.”

Ford felt like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He felt himself begin to tremble again. He must have let another tear slip, because the hooded figure stopped smoothing his hair and put a gentle hand on his cheek, wiping it away with their thumb.

“I don’t mean to frighten you,” they told him. “But Ivan will kill you if he doesn’t get what he wants. And if he kills you, he’ll just go after your brother and your friend.”

Ford choked back rising bile. He knew Stan and Helen wouldn’t let anything happen to Fiddleford. They’d fight. That’s the kind of people they were. But if they went up against a person like Ivan. 

He let out an involuntary whimper at the thought.

“I’m so sorry,” the figure began. Before they could say anything else, the door was thrown open, slamming against the wall with a bang. 

“And what, may I ask, is going on here?” Ivan’s voice dripped like poisoned honey.

The follower scrambled to straighten up, ripping their warm hand away from Ford’s face. He missed it immediately. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” they said frantically, bowing quickly at the waist. “I was...well, I...I just…”

Ivan raised a hand to silence his follower, who shrank in on themselves like a scared child. “I do expect an explanation from you, but we shall deal with that later. For the time being, I have a job to finish with our guest.” 

Even though Ford couldn’t see Ivan turn his face towards him, he could feel that red, filmy eye boring into him. 

In an instant, visions of horror flashed before his eyes. More torture from Ivan - broken fingers, more beatings, watching his friend destroy himself over and over again. And then, when Ivan finally used him up, he’d move on to Stan and Helen. Subject them to the same tortures, probably worse because they were bound to fight back. 

Ford screwed his eyes shut, desperate to chase away the images of those he cared for left broken and bleeding by this monstrous man. Desperation and fear clawed in his belly. His whole body trembled. 

“He’s in my cabin!”

Ivan and the follower both swung their heads in Ford’s direction. It took him a minute to realize the shrill declaration had come from him.

A beat of silence filled the room, and Ford allowed the utter, helpless failure engulf him completely. 

He’d failed. It was all his fault. He’d doomed Fiddleford to the life he’d been trying to save him from.

“Excellent,” Ivan said. Ford could hear the smile in his voice. It made him sick. “I’m so glad you finally see things from our point of view, Dr. Pines.”

Ford wanted to strangle him.

“The hour is late, though,” Ivan said casually. “And this storm has not lessened. I believe you’ll keep until tomorrow, doctor.”

“W-wait,” Ford sputtered, “you said you’d let me go if I told you where he was.”

“Doctor, you wound me,” Ivan said. There was that detestable smirk again. “What sort of host would I be if I sent you home in a downpour?” He made his way towards the door, the hooded follower slinking behind him. Ford saw the follower look back over their shoulder at him. Even though he couldn’t see their face, he knew they looked as helpless as he felt. 

Ivan reached the door, ushering his follower out in front of him. As he stepped through the doorway, Ivan said, “Enjoy the rest of your stay, Dr. Pines.” 

It was only when Ivan had closed the door, darkening the room once more, that Ford noticed he’d left the monitor on. Fiddleford’s wild, desperate gaze stared back at him. 

He let his head fall forward, although he no longer had it in him to cry. “I’m sorry, Fiddleford,” he whispered out loud.

He swore, somewhere behind his eyes, he heard Bill cackling with demented delight.  
\-----------

McGucket had lost them, but he really didn’t seem to notice. 

Stan had honestly tried to keep up with the little nerd, but it became clear pretty quickly that he was just too excited about his discovery to remember he was talking to two people that didn’t have degrees in advanced mechanical engineering. 

At least he saw even more clearly why Ford had gotten so attached to the twerp. 

The sharp stab of guilt and fear that was roiling quietly in his gut suddenly spiked. There was still no word from Ford. The rain still beat down on them mercilessly. He’d never felt so helpless in all his life.

He had to think of something else. 

He chanced a glance over at Helen, sitting in the other kitchen chair to his right, who wasn’t even trying to pretend like she understood what was happening. Her eyes were distant and unfocused, had been ever since she’d gotten off the phone with her daughter. She lazily squeezed the almost empty can of beer, making the sides buckle in on themselves slightly. Stan felt another pang of guilt well up in his chest. She looked exhausted and miserable, and Stan knew that was his fault. She hadn’t asked to be dragged into any of this. 

Helen was a strong person, there was no denying that. She was level-headed and firm and a voice of reason when things got chaotic. But even the strongest pillars could break if they were beaten enough times by a churning, unforgiving sea. And Stan shuddered to think that he might be the one to break her eventually.

“...and the procedure was supposed to be permanent.” Suddenly, McGucket’s voice drifted up to his ears, and Stan’s attention snapped back over to the excited hillbilly. In one hand, McGucket held a pair of pliers. In the other, a small bundle of wires, pulled apart to expose a small, gray, chip-like piece. A small, near microscopic, section of the chip had a charred black spot on it. McGucket pointed the nose of the pliers at the chip and continued. “This micro-actuator looks like it was overheated at some point and stopped working. Without it the gun can’t function, since there’s nothing to keep the internal mechanisms moving. The electric charge as a control signal is fine, but it looks like the source of energy - that being, of course, the charge from the memories themselves - overloads it and causes a cascade failure and -”

“Hey,” Stan finally interjected. He had a sneaking suspicion that, if he didn’t, McGucket would launch himself into orbit. 

McGucket’s head shot up to look at him. He looked surprised that Stan and Helen were even still there.

“As fascinating and completely incomprehensible as all this is,” Stan said, raising a hand to massage away the rumblings of a headache, “you think you could explain, in the simplest way you can, exactly what the hell all this means?”

McGucket blushed a bit. Stan was beginning to realize that the little man didn’t really enjoy being the center of attention. The only way he could really get going was if he talked so much he thought he was alone in the room. 

“Well, it basically means that the part of the gun that was supposed to make the memory erasing process permanent won’t work more than a few times.” 

“So that’s why it didn’t work when that guy attacked us in my house?” Helen asked. Stan was actually kind of shocked to hear her finally speak. 

“Exactly,” McGucket replied. “I would venture to guess that all the smaller version have the same problem. I had to significantly decrease the size of the actuator to ensure mobility. None of them will last, and it makes the effects wear off faster. Especially when you’re exposed to stimuli, like photos or videos or -”

“Or a giant portal of doom,” Stan said. He bit down his urge to smirk.

Irritation creased McGucket’s brow, and he said, “Yes, that too.”

“But that still doesn’t answer the question of why that guy was in my house,” Helen said, clearly frustrated with the not knowing.

“I think that’s pretty obvious,” Stan said. “He was looking for McGucket.”

“Yeah, but why would he think he was in my house?” Helen said, looking up at him, her dark green eyes practically burning a hole in his forehead. “Hell, how would he even have known he was with us? The only person who even saw us today is Ed.”

That got Stan thinking for a moment. “Yeah,” he muttered. “He was the only person who saw us today.”

“Oh god,” Helen said, incredulously. “You’re not seriously suggesting...Stan, I mean, come _on_. Ed Matthews is almost sixty-five. He’s a harmless grandpa!”

“Hey, if we can think the bean pole is behind something,” Stan said, jabbing his thumb in Fiddleford’s direction, “then grandpas aren’t in the clear either. Besides, I’ve met some pretty spry old guys in my time.”

Helen turned and addressed McGucket, “Ed wasn’t the guy in my house, right? You would have recognized him earlier if he were in your little...group, wouldn’t you?”

McGucket thought for a moment, obviously trying to conjure forth something that made him think of Dr. Matthews. Finally, he ran a hand through his hair, sighing in frustration, and said, “I don’t think so? My mind is only just now starting to heal, and things are still mighty mixed up in there. I induct every member myself, though, so he might be in here somewhere.”

“Ed doesn’t even believe in the supernatural stuff in this town,” Helen added, squeezing her beer can harder. It sounded to Stan like she were trying to prove it more to herself than him and McGucket. “Even if he had come across it, he wouldn’t need some memory-erasing gun to convince himself it wasn’t real.”

“Maybe that’s not the thing that Ed was trying to forget,” Stan said. 

Helen glanced over at him, her brow furrowed in confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Stan chewed his lower lip, trying to find a way to say this without setting Helen off again. As thoughts of being kicked out, living out of his car, crushing loneliness assaulted him from all sides, he realized there wasn’t really a way to do that. So he said, “Let’s just say things don’t necessarily have to be supernatural for people to want to forget them.”

Helen turned fully in her chair to face him, and Stan immediately regretted opening his big mouth. The beer can crumpled completely under her grip. He steeled himself against whatever angry words Helen was preparing to sling his way.

Then McGucket cleared his throat. Helen snapped her head back to look at him, and Stan swore he saw the other man shrivel a bit under her gaze. Eventually, McGucket managed to stammer out, “I would...that is, I think Stan might be right? Maybe you could, um, I dunno, tell us if anything unusual has happened to Dr. Matthews. Y-you know, if that’s okay with you.”

Stan could practically see the anger drip from Helen’s shoulders. The guilt returned with incredibly force. He’d never seen her like this, but whatever was going on in her mind, he could tell it was eating away at the edges of that level-headedness he so admired in her. 

Helen sighed, and finally said, quietly, “I mean, his wife died about two years ago, but it wasn’t what anyone would call unusual. She’d been in a bad way for a long time.”

“What happened?” McGucket asked. His tone was genuinely sympathetic. 

“Ovarian cancer,” Helen replied. “Poor Andrea wasted away for months near the end. Then Ed came into her hospital room one day after his rounds, and she was...already gone.” Helen cast her gaze down to the floor, letting silence fill the moment. Stan and McGucket stayed respectfully silent.

Helen sighed again, lifted her head, and said, with renewed conviction, “Ed was torn up about it, sure, but he would never want to forget Andrea. He loved that woman. They were married for forty-two years. There’s no way he’d ever want to wipe her from his memories.”

“Of course not,” McGucket said. Stan saw him reach out a hand, as if he could comfort Helen from the awful thoughts from across the table. But then McGucket thought better of it and pulled it back. “Besides,” he continued, “we don’t deal with memories like that.”

“What do you mean, ‘memories like that’?” Stan asked.

“I guess you could call them “real life” memories,” McGucket said. “Things like the death of a loved one or bad break ups or other traumatic things like that. I would never agree to erase those memories.”

“Why not?” Helen asked. 

“Well, there are just some memories people can’t deal with,” McGucket replied. “Memories we weren’t designed to deal with, because the things they concern shouldn’t exist. Like the things out there in those woods. Those things are too much for normal people. But trauma - the real, honest-to-goodness kind - people are strong enough to overcome those everyday traumas. Dealing with those sorts of memories helps you heal. It might even make you a stronger person in the end.”

McGucket smiled serenely as he finished his little sermon. It made Stan’s gut bubble in irritation. Hearing McGucket talk about “everyday trauma” like it was some kind of...character-building exercise, it brought that irritation up his throat and come out his mouth.

“You really buy into that, huh?” 

McGucket’s smile slipped from his face as he flicked his glance over to Stan. Stan tried to maintain an air of nonchalance as he said, “You really think that people should just...deal with shit like their wives dying, but not with little bearded men rooting around in their trash?”

“Of course not,” McGucket replied, sounding legitimately shocked Stan would even suggest such a thing. “A tragedy like that isn’t just something to be glossed over. But the sort of things that the people in the Society of the Blind Eye have witnessed...it’s unfathomable. It shouldn’t even have been seen by normal human beings. We can’t begin to process it. I certainly couldn’t, thanks to Stanford.”

“I told you to watch your mouth about my brother, string bean,” Stan ground out. He forced down the tidal wave of anxiety with righteous brotherly fury. 

“Guys…” Helen muttered, uselessly.

“Well, I’m sorry,” McGucket retorted, “but you can’t deny that he has to shoulder some of the blame here. What happened to me was because of him. If he hadn’t brought me out here, if he’d just left well enough alone, none of this would be happening at all.”

“Guys,” Helen repeated. A bit louder this time.

“Ford didn’t put that goddamn gun to your head and pull the trigger!” Stan shouted, rising from his chair so quickly it almost tipped over. “Ford didn’t make you run away like a coward. Ford didn’t force you to start a cult to wipe other people’s memories. One that quickly proved to be frigging useless anyway because that damn gun doesn’t even work right. Ford might have caused the accident, but you made your own choices. Was it worth it, McGucket? Was it worth dragging yourself and my brother through nine kinds of hell just because you didn’t want to deal with what happened to you?”

McGucket narrowed his eyes at Stan, in what looked to be as close to actual anger and resentment as Stan figured he could get. Through clenched teeth, he said, “You have no idea what I went through when I was here with your crazy brother. And it wasn’t just the portal. He dragged me on all kinds of insane little adventures with him. We were nearly killed half a dozen times, every time at the hands of some ungodly creature we could barely comprehend!”

“At least you got to be with my brother!” Stan shouted back. He didn’t even care that his voice cracked, although it seemed to surprise McGucket a bit. The anger left the other man’s face. Even Helen was staring at Stan in shock.

Stan continued anyway. “You didn’t even know I existed before now, did you? Even when you knew Ford and had all your memories, he probably never told you about me. Wanna know why? Because up until a month ago, I was living out of my fucking car because he hated my guts. One stupid mistake and I lost my brother for ten years. Is that one of your “everyday traumas”, McGucket? Am I strong enough to move past poverty and prison and near suicide?”

McGucket flinched like he’d been struck across the face. “Oh, didn’t like hearing about that, did you?” Stan said, pulling back the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A faded, ghostly scar ran up the length of his arm. If you weren’t looking close enough, you could miss it entirely. He shoved the scar close to McGucket’s face, and said, “Is this the kind of trauma I can just work through? While you were out having the life with my brother I’d only dreamed about? While I nearly bled out in my car?! Answer me, you little bastard!”

“Stan, stop it!” Helen shouted. 

Stan stopped talking, but he didn’t take his gaze off McGucket or make a move to take his arm away. He wanted the uppity little shit to know exactly who he’d just told to “work through it”. 

“Walk away, Stan,” Helen said quietly. The firm, maternal tone was back. He knew he should listen. But a sadistic part of him stayed still, his arm still outstretched. A phantom pain tripped up his scar, the first he’d had in years. It made him want to scream. 

A whine from Ripley echoed from the hall, followed by her scratching at the door. 

“Stan.” Helen was urging him again. Just walk away.

Finally, he pulled down the sleeve of his shirt, once again covering up the scar. He pushed his chair back and stepped away from the table, then stomped out of the kitchen. Another glance over his shoulder showed that McGucket looked pretty damn horrified by what he’d just seen.

The only thing that really upset Stan was the look on Helen’s face. She looked so tired, ready to fall apart at any minute. He found it very telling that she didn’t leap to comfort McGucket as soon as Stan was out of their view. 

He grabbed his coat from the living room sofa where he’d tossed it. Ripley was still at the door, decidedly subdued. Instead of leaping about in excitement over a trip outside, she watched her master carefully, almost fearfully. Stan patted her head as he opened the door to let her out. He followed her. 

The last time he and Ford had fought, Stan had gone to the gas station the next day to pick up a pack of cigarettes. Just in case. They and a lighter were in the glove box of the Stanley Mobile. He thought it was a pretty good testament to not only his resolve, but the strengthening bond between the brothers that he hadn’t had a reason to open them yet.

Not to mention he knew Ford and Helen would give him such a lecture if they ever caught him smelling like smoke. 

But now, as Ripley trotted beside him, matching his purposeful stride, he headed towards the car. He didn’t even bother putting his hood up to keep himself dry. Not like the fleece jacket could help much anyway. At least the rain had stopped coming down in sheets and was now just falling steadily.

He’d forgotten to lock it when he and Helen had rushed inside, so he slid into the driver’s side easily, the leather squelching under him. Ripley sat on the ground right outside the door, looking at him thoughtfully. She seemed to be in no big hurry to be done and out of the rain. He leaned over, popped open the glove box, and removed the cigarettes and lighter. 

The flame licking at the tip of the cigarette filled the small space with an orange glow. He doused it quickly and took a long drag. As he held it in, he let all the fantasies come rushing back - the things he and Ford had planned to do as children, treasure hunting, picking up babes, traveling the world and seeing new sights. All the stuff that self-righteous little idiot inside had and was too dense to realize how precious it was.

Two fat streams of tears fall down his cheeks as he exhaled.  
\------------

Ivan didn’t sleep very often. He didn’t like how vulnerable it made him feel. And he certainly didn’t like to dream.

So, most nights, he just sat up on his cot in the bowels of their inner sanctum. Sat up and looked at the picture he’d clipped out of the newspaper.

The boy in the picture was twelve years old. Even though the picture wasn’t in color, Ivan knew the boy had brown hair and steely gray eyes. He was tall, slender, his face betraying not a single emotion perceptible to the average person. But Ivan could see the sadness in the boy’s eyes - a sadness deep and painful, but not fully understood. Ivan supposed he could be blamed for that, at least. 

Perhaps blamed for the sadness going a bit deeper than it should.

But he was going to fix that. He’d promised to after all. 

As soon as this business with McGucket was taken care of, he could move on. Fulfill his promise. 

He read the caption below the picture. _Preston Northwest, age twelve, son of the late Oliver and Ophelia Northwest of Gravity Falls Oregon._

Ivan returned his gaze to the picture. This time, he didn’t focus his normal eye on the face of Preston Northwest. 

Instead, he focused his red, filmed eye right over the boy’s head. 

To the thing no normal camera would reveal to anyone with a normal set of eyes. 

To the floating, yellow triangle in a top hat, lazily hovering, almost seeming to whisper in the boy’s ear.


End file.
